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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27942059">"Digging Deep(er)" or “Holy Shit, Jimbert Is Real?!”- The Meta</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebookhunter/pseuds/Goldragon'>Goldragon (thebookhunter)</a>, <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ledbythreads/pseuds/ledbythreads'>ledbythreads</a>, <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mary_anjel/pseuds/mary_anjel'>mary_anjel</a>, <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Deyora_Ash/pseuds/Miss_Deyora_Ash'>Miss_Deyora_Ash</a>, <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebookhunter/pseuds/thebookhunter'>thebookhunter</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>So long ago and out of sight [13]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Led Zeppelin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Contributions Welcome, M/M, a thorough attempt will be made at not using words i don't know how to use, all will be revealed, have mercy, i am NOT actually a lit graduate, i'm a classicist in fact, i'm gonna get sued for copyright, i'm taking this seriously but i can embarrass myself with the technicalities..., symbols metaphors themes, this is a META, we'll be analysing songs folks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 22:47:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>47,890</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27942059</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebookhunter/pseuds/Goldragon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ledbythreads/pseuds/ledbythreads, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mary_anjel/pseuds/mary_anjel, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Deyora_Ash/pseuds/Miss_Deyora_Ash, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebookhunter/pseuds/thebookhunter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>(Harrumph. Tap-tap. Is this working? okay)</p>
<p>So what you'll find here is a collection of uuuh literary analyses of Robert Plant's original lyrics from the 70s to current times. The idea behind it is that Robert has been writing about his epic love story with Jimmy Page...</p>
<p>(*shuffling of chairs and rumble of footsteps as the audience stampedes for the nearest exit in a panic*)</p>
<p>... Oookay. So. The three brave souls remaining, with enough curiosity and open-mindedness (or enough "poor girl, she's tried so hard") to give me a chance. Gather round, bit closer.</p>
<p>What I was saying. Robert Plant has been writing about his epic love story with Jimmy Page in his songs since forever. It's really not that subtle. All it takes to see it is considering "so what if it was real" and have a quick look. </p>
<p>But since I've found symbols, metaphors, recurring themes, connections and callbacks all over the place, I'd like to tell you about them. I've done the work, so you don't have to.</p>
<p>The conclusion is (spoilers) yes, Jimbert is hella real, it's not platonic, it's colossal, it's fucking beautiful... and it's alive. </p>
<p>Intrigued yet? Come on board mateys, we're going sailing.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jimmy Page/Robert Plant</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>So long ago and out of sight [13]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1700926</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>61</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Introduction: Till time conspired to steal our crown</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is probably a work in progress at any time you check it out. Stuff keeps coming up. SO MANY SONGS.</p>
<p>It's not a systematic examination of every single song. I'm focusing on what I identify as Jimbert songs, and I analyse some as a group, connected by a theme or a symbol or a concept. (I may digress sometimes? I'll try to keep it tight.)</p>
<p>And yeah, of course I can be "wrong" in my conclusions, even in the pretty flexible country of literary analysis. I will try to back  up whatever claim I make so everyone can follow my thinking, and point out the AH-HAAAAH!! moment where I went "wrong." On top of that, some things are too ambiguous to make a definite case, but I may have ideas, which I will offer if I think they have some merit beyond jimbert senses tingling. Also, when I don't know what the hell it means, I will say so. The idea is to do this "seriously", but hell, I'm not actually writing a thesis. Shall we take this more as a starting point, to kick ideas around? </p>
<p>In order to work out meanings and contexts, we'll be comparing the songs against the backdrop of what is known about their lives, see what happens. We won't be digging in anyone's rubbish bins or dropping in on private conversations (we really don't need to) but if they willingly put it out there, it's fair game. In this house we believe Jimmy and Robert have been "inviting people in" (in Leds's terms, as opposed to "coming out") since the very, very beginning. We got the invite and said "with pleasure!" and here we are.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>LIL NOTE: It should have been rated at the very least Mature, for cursing if nothing else (mine) aaaaand for quite a few of the metaphors. (He's not the messiah! He's a very naughty boy!)</p>
    </blockquote><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>In which we introduce this thing, and offer an overview of how I ended up here writing essays on the realness of Jimbert in the public interwebs.</p><p>We will also be asking "does it really matter if they were lovers or not?" and we will conclude that actually yes, it matters a lot.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>It's a bit of a Jimbert apology and opinionated and personal, so if you want to skip it, you can jump to chapter 2.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>This whole thing started with a crown.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I was taken in by the Hurricane Led Zeppelin some time in late October 2019. I went seeking out the fandom on Tumblr, where I usually abide. It's a tiny, tiny fandom, but <strong>LEDBYTHREADS</strong> was there to welcome me in and guide my steps. Eventually we became partners in crime and fanfic cahooters. Thousands of hours of joy and delight have derived from the day I decided to have a listen to Mothership and was floored by one song after another, until I got to Kashmir, which left me jaw unhinged, eyes wide open, spine melting, gripping the table, going<em> "Oh god I am a fan, I am a fan, where has this been all my life, goood almighty I AM A FAN."</em> I had <em>never</em> had such a strong reaction to music before. What EVEN was that THING?!?!? where had it been all my life?!?!</p>
<p>That was the first systemic shock, the music itself. If you're a Zephead, I don't have to tell you.</p>
<p>The second shock was the time I listened seriously to <strong>'Dance With You Tonight'</strong> and got zapped by a thousand megawatts delivered when I put a single finger on that confounded crown.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>*</p>
<p> </p>
<p><a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DSmegdrShcsM&amp;t=NjAzMjAyMGUzODE4YzAwM2MwODkxMWQ5NmExOTZhNzJmN2M2N2NhOSwwMWVkNGI3OTU4NTAwNTEyNzEyZWFiZmI3OGMxNDNmZWE2MDFiNjlh&amp;ts=1607104478">‘Dance with you tonight’ is a song written by Robert Plant released in his album Carry Fire in 2017. </a>It’s a love song, and it contains the line “<em>’til time conspired to steal our crown”.</em></p>
<p>I had listened to this song a buncha times, but this line managed to escape my notice, as apparently it did for everyone else? Until one day it didn’t. It was the WAIT WHAT?? moment which has led me… here.</p>
<p>Of course I was aware that Jimbert existed as a ship, an idea many many people have entertained since the very beginning, find pleasing, joke about, scream about it in captions of the most outrageously jimberty photographs and such, make memes and manips. Many shout “Jimbert is real!” next to a photo of the two of them interacting in an admittedly ambiguous, suggestive way.</p>
<p>I thought it was fun and very sexy as a concept or a fantasy, but I never for one minute considered it could be real. I thought Jimmy and Robert were very extra, and that they looked really nice together, and that it was the seventies so maybe they fucked once idk, why not, they do seem very comfortable together, but meh, these things are never real. People will go insane looking for meaning in body language and poking in quotes and interviews and stuff. But even if we had a photo of Jimmy and Robert kissing on the mouth, what of it? We have a buncha photos of Robert kissing men on the mouth (and more than that, with Peter Grant). We have TONS of photos of other male rock stars and actors kissing on the mouth. It doesn’t mean much. It certainly doesn’t ‘prove’ anything.</p>
<p>And then, this line. These words.<strong><em> “Our crown.”</em></strong></p>
<p>*Record screech* Hold on a fucking second. Hold the fuck up. Hold on.</p>
<p>Before the fricking crown, I never once considered... I mean, who would? Because it was <em>right there. </em>It's not even subtle. And once you start looking at the rest of Carry Fire, once you start learning more and more... It's impossible that it's true, because if it was, everybody would know about it. So I must be crazy, indeed. I must be hallucinating. But I couldn't get the crown out of my head, the "so long ago and out of sight", the Carnival, the whole notion of a secret love from a long long time ago Robert was calling back to him.</p>
<p>I ran to Leds, of course, to have me a meltdown about it. COULD IT BE? WHAT THE FRICK?? COULD IT BE?? YOOOOOOO IS THIS SONG ABOUT JIMMY?? COULD IT BE ABOUT JIMMY?? WHO ELSE COULD IT BE?? WHO ELSE??</p>
<p>We proceeded to consider other potential candidates. Won’t bore you with the process. We went back to Jimmy, because honest to fucking god, look me in the eye and tell me ACTUALLY IT COULD BE ABOUT MAUREEN/SHIRLEY/PATTY GRIFFIN/ TORI AMOS/…JONESY??? Go the fuck ahead, tell me who the fuck else did Robert Plant once share a crown with!  </p>
<p>And then I paid more attention to the rest of the song. I went back to “so long ago and out of sight.” SECRET LOVE OMG HELP. IS THIS JIMMEH?!? COULD IT POSSIBLY BEEEE???</p>
<p>I MEAN, THIS IS A LOVE SONG ABOUT WANTING ONE LAST GO WITH SOMEONE. *MIND BLOWN* Are you telling me, Robert. WHAT ARE YOU TELLING ME.</p>
<p>WHAT IN THE EVERLOVING FUCK.</p>
<p>And here is where I started to consider seriously the possibility that yes, indeed, the most likely candidate to be the ‘you’ in the song was Jimmy Page, and therefore, <em>Jimbert</em> <em>might</em> <em>actually be real.</em></p>
<p>But I couldn’t put it all down on a handful of words, just one song, as fucking clear as it seemed at this point. It was such an insane notion! Yeah, that song seemed… so much but… but how come am I the only one that I know taking this fucking seriously???</p>
<p>So we accepted the provisional hypothesis that Jimbert might be real, we adjusted the lens, and we started looking.</p>
<p>And lord almighty, the fucking thing is E V E R Y W H E R E. <em>Everywhere</em>.</p>
<p>To begin with, in this album. <strong>Carry Fire</strong> and <strong>A Way With Words</strong>, more songs about wanting to get back with a lover from long ago. Carry Fire takes us somewhere with Easternish music (like, kind of northern Africa? Like... Morocco?). Both allude to bumps in the road in the past, scars, falls from grace. Both vow to wait.</p>
<p>And then Bookie sits down with Well of Wisdom on LZ story and lore <strong>ledbythreads</strong>, and here we go. Meet The Timeline.</p>
<p>I learned about the trip to Morocco, and Robert saying <em>“I would be very happy to spend a couple of weeks on top of the Atlas Mountains with him before the end.</em>” <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fsearch%3Fchannel%3Dtrow2%26client%3Dfirefox-b-d%26q%3Drobert%2Bplant%2Bjimmy%2Bpage%2B%2Bwe%2Bdon%2527t%2Bhug%2Benough&amp;t=ZDNjNTg0YmIwOGZlMDdmNzU2Yzc4NGY0OTU0NDIyNzMwYzZiOTU1ZCxhMWJkMzE2YzRhZmRkOTM0YTQ0ODc3MWRhYTE2MGRhM2UwODE3NTdi&amp;ts=1607104478">(choose your fighter)</a> (<em>“and if there’s one last time I can dance with you…</em>”) and the 1994 reunion, which STARTED IN MOROCCO. The renewed work collaboration, according to them, started with the song<strong> Wonderful One.</strong><em> “When you do what you do I can never let you go / when you feel the way you feel, you can never let it show.”</em></p>
<p>OMG FOR REAL?!?! *BOOKIE ASCENDS* *FIC HAPPENS*. BUT BUT BUT... BUT THIS WOULD BE INSANE?? WHAT SORT OF CRAZY CONSPIRACY,… WHY DOES NO-ONE ELSE SEE IT? WHY DOES NO-ONE ELSE SAY IT???  LIKE, IF IT WAS REAL, IT WOULD BE FUCKING HUGE??? IT'S RIGHT THERE??? *SCREAMING* AM I GOING BANANAS HERE OR IS THERE REALLY SOMETHING?? COULD IT POSSIBLY BE REAL?? COULD IT?? I MEAN. WHAT?? — No, at this point we are STILL not total converts. Probably because IT’S TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE.</p>
<p>As my familiarity with the Zep catalogue expands, I keep finding what seem to be explicit references to Zeppelin songs in <strong>DWYT</strong>. Is this coincidence??? Is this recycling? What the hell is it?</p>
<p>At one point, FISHIE IS EXPOSED TO “<strong>THE ONLY ONE</strong>” — WHAAAAAAT??? (Yeah, we'll be talking about that one.)</p>
<p>THEN FISHIE IS EXPOSED TO <strong>ACHILLES LAST STAND</strong>. ALL THE PIECES FUCKING FIT. FISHIE’S BRAIN IMPLODES.  THAT FUCKING NAILS IT. THAT’S IT. THAT’S THAT. I’M DONE. Because how fucking CLEAR can you get, how straight(heh)forward, how much more simply can you put it… while everybody manages not to see it. It’s not <em>me</em> who has the problem, fucks sakes. It’s everybody else’s! – I know this sounds like Paranoia 101 but… fucks sakes, just read that fucking thing! Just… come <em>on</em>!!</p>
<p>Jimbert is fucking real. These two are real. They were not just “lovers”, they didn’t fool around once (or three or four or ten times, doesn’t’ matter) because it was the seventies. <em>They’re the love of each other’s lives.</em></p>
<p>They were together in the Zepp era, and that relationship is where the most beautiful material of the greatest rock band ever comes from. <strike>ALL YOUR FAVOURITE SONGS ARE GAY.</strike></p>
<p> </p>
<p>So that was Fishie Losing Her Entire Shit over the Revelation of Jimbert. That’s what Our Crown did to me. Welcome to the Madness.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>And so, I became a closet believer for months, until I couldn't take it no more.</p>
<p>The irritating thing is the whole "we don't talk about this" notion one finds in the fandom. The kindest fans will simply smile mildly and move away, but won't enter the discussion. Other people call you names. Either way, the thing is unspeakable. We don't talk about it in polite company.</p>
<p>But hell, Jimbert is not a dirty word, and it's not a fucking joke, and why the hell am I the one writing essays to prove it based on some fucking lyrics, when really all it should take is a quick summary of their story, supported by like 3 photos and 2 vids picked up at random?? If it was a man and a woman, there wouldn't be a single fricking doubt. People would be calling YOU delusional if you dared to claim "nah it's platonic, they were just bandmates."</p>
<p>But neither of them have published a press release announcing their sexuality in clinical terminology, and Jimmy Page said "no homo" once, so I'm the one who is delusional. WORSE, calling them queer and insisting that they were lovers borders on slander. Like it was an ugly thing, like it was an insult.</p>
<p>Well, fuck that. This is not the fucking 70s anymore, or the 80s or the 90s or the bleeding Noughties. In 2020 we shouldn't be assuming everyone is straight until proven otherwise. And we shouldn't consider impolite or inconsiderate to make a fucking case that two men are/were lovers, especially when they've made it the core and the axis of the work of their lives.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"But why do I care so much if they were fucking or not? All that should matter is the music..."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Well, first of all, it matters to THEM. I didn't write those lyrics. I didn't pose for those photos. I didn't plaster their album covers with queer icons and references. I didn't give interview after interview which, should people just remove the heteronormative goggles for a moment, would indicate beyond a fricking doubt that a) Robert Plant has outed himself as bisexual in every way, except by using that word, and b) that Jimmy and him were lovers in the 70s, pining like a pair of uuuh pining things during the 80s, and a happily old married couple in the 90s. (That's in actual interviews, okay? Not even the songs and just, everything else.)</p>
<p>So it matters enough that they've scattered their codes, their signals, and their clues all over the place since the beginning. They've not come out as such, but they've made it so that, if you want, you can see it. It matters enough to them that they experience the same oppression as any other queer person and push against it in their own way.</p>
<p>But you tell me: would it matter at all if it turned out that the greatest songwriting duo of the fricking 20th century, leading members of the greatest rock band ever according to whitest straightest malest critics, were 2 queer men in love with each other? What do you think? And would it mean anything to queer people everywhere? Would it mean anything to their most misogynistic fans who perceive them as a pair of bird-shagging machines and all the more awesome for it? Would it mean anything to the music scholars who analyse their work now or in the future? Would it mean anything to queer historians dealing with popular culture in the 20th century?</p>
<p>Would it change the way we listen to their songs? Would it mean anything to you personally? Would it change the way you see them in countless photos, looking at each other like they are desperately in love? When Robert sings about hiding his feelings and longing for freedom? When we drool over Jimmy's theremin shenanigans making Robert literally moan?</p>
<p>Is it any of our business? Shouldn't people's private lives be private? Can't we just enjoy the songs? - This is like "when it comes to race I'm colorblind" kind of crap. Sexual identity matters. It affects the way you live in this world and how you experience culture and art, and if you're an artist, it definitely influences your work. Do I really need to make that case?</p>
<p>With Jimmy and Robert, we could say, however, that the music is everything that matters, and it will be true. It matters enormously. In real life they like to be reserved and opaque in their interviews, they like to tell nosy journalists where to go. But music matters too much. They pour everything they are and what they believe in and what they feel in the music. And so, it's the music which tells their story: On stage, they allowed themselves to be flirty and intense and have extended musical sex and basically show the world what they were to each other. In the lyrics, Robert sings about their truth.</p>
<p>So yeah, it's always been about the music. Which means that you can't divorce the music from who they are, specifically from this part of their experience and their identity as human beings, because otherwise you just won't <em>get</em> it.</p>
<p>When you take the lyrics, <em>and</em> the photos, videos, interviews, cover art, life events, the Coverdale Debacle… When you put it all together, it takes one hell of a lot of denial to not entertain the possibility, at the very least.</p>
<p>So if you're still sceptical, I invite you to do just that. Entertain the possibility. Because it sheds light on everything they've done. Because it matters to them. Because they threw in symbols and clues and riddles because they wanted fans to engage with the work. Because Robert wants you to dig deeper.</p>
<p>That's all we're doing here. Really, that's all.</p>
<p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Carry Fire and the Jimbert Suite</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>In which we have a quick overlook at the method this thing will follow. We will name the 6 songs in Robert's  solo album 'Carry Fire' which form in my mind the “Jimbert Suite” of that work. </p><p>I will be arguing and sketching out how by following the threads that start from these songs, you can pretty much get to every corner of Robert’s original work. Which I believe is intentional, as well as the parallels between Carry Fire and Robert's album Fate of Nations from 1993.  </p><p>Let's go?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><strong>Carry Fire</strong> is an album by Robert Plant and the Sensational Shapeshifters released in 2017.</p><p>It contains 11 songs, 6 of which have love as a theme:</p><p> </p><p><strong>The May Queen</strong> (from here on TMQ)</p><p><strong>Season’s Song</strong> (S’S)</p><p><strong>Dance With You Tonight</strong> (DWYT)</p><p><strong>A Way With Words</strong> (AWWW heh)</p><p><strong>Carry Fire</strong> (CF – will specify when I mean the album)</p><p><strong>Bluebirds Over The Mountain</strong> (BBOTM) (lol)</p><p>and <strong>Heaven Sent</strong> (HS)</p><p>And then there’s <strong>Keep It Hid</strong>, which is a lil bit different... We’ll deal with here too.</p><p> </p><p>One of these, <strong>Season’s Song</strong> is a <span class="u">breakup song, a goodbye song</span>. I’m as certain as I can be that it was inspired by the ending of Robert’s relationship with Patty Griffin, who was his partner in life and crime (music) for some years. They wrote a number of songs and performed together with Band of Joy. – It’s a beautiful song, while we’re at it, and it’s remarkable too because of the “seasons”, which is a theme we’ll be looking into later.</p><p>Among the remaining songs with love as a theme, <strong>The May Queen</strong> is unspecific enough that is hard to pin on an individual (but we <em>could</em> do, based on the title and what we get from the rest of the songs; see below) but<strong> DWYT, CF, AWWW, HS,</strong> and <strong>Bluebirds over the mountain,</strong> which is a cover, <strong>share a common theme: “come back to me/I want you back/I’m waiting for you.”</strong> (*) I call these the Jimbert Suite of this album.</p><p>As for <strong>Keep it Hid</strong>, although not strictly a “come back to me/I want you back” song, it belongs in the Jimbert suite too. It touches on a theme, the “hiding” and it contains a symbol, “silver key in a golden cup” which is very straightforwardly linked with Jimmy Page, especially in the Page/Plant era (94-2001.) (We'll get to that.)</p><p>The four core songs of the suite, CF, DWYT, AWWW, and CF, not only have the same theme, but each touches on different aspects of the relationship, and in combination cover or link to pretty much all the symbols and metaphors Robert Plant has used in his songs about Jimmy Page through the years, since the Zep days (BEAR WITH ME).</p><p> </p><p>
  <strike>(Jesus christ where have I got myself into.)</strike>
</p><p> </p><p>The themes touched in these specific songs, summarising (really brutally), and in order of apparition in the song:</p><p> </p><p><strong>Carry Fire:</strong> Jimmy as king (Robert humbles himself); desire; “stranger in the promised land”; scars. And the music: Morocco.</p><p><strong>DWYT</strong>: god, so much: the carnival; explicit Zep references (with their own callbacks and meanings); old love; hiding love; love as light; journey; flame; dancing; stranger in the promised land; world changing; time runs/ threatens/destroys; miles; THE CROWN (Jimmy as king, Robert as King – Zep as monarchy / divinity)</p><p><strong>AWWW</strong>: seasons; fall from grace; reaching out to the lover; cold outside; the world-world that changes-your world (stranger in the promised land); miles; flame (probably more... Thick song.)</p><p><strong>HEAVEN SENT</strong>: (oof) Jimmy as angel – messenger, envoy; gates (of heaven); stolen kiss; fall from grace; flame; everlasting love; Jimmy as King; Jimmy as sorcerer; waves (sea); song – calling; freedom (golden freedom); love as flood; time running; eagle and dove; forgiveness; quest to win back your love. (This song is a monster. I think it will have its own chapter.)</p><p>And <strong>KEEP IT HID</strong>: cold outside; ZEP REFERENCES (‘if the sun don’t shine’), hiding (love); edge of the world- the east; silver key and golden cup.</p><p> </p><p>Themes overlap between the songs to weave a complete whole, but also branch out towards the songs or imagery sets where these symbols come from, where they acquire their full meaning. You have to follow these threads to find out what’s going on, because in CF (the album) they are used in their advanced, fully formed shape. The clues to unpack the metaphors are elsewhere. We’ll go find them where they are.</p><p> </p><p>To start on that thread, it appears that these songs work as pairs with earlier songs. They emerge or respond or evoke one-on-one important songs from Robert’s earlier work, with Zep and in the Page/Plant era.</p><p>The album itself, Carry Fire, mirrors Robert’s solo album from 93 ‘<strong>Fate of Nations’.</strong></p><p>How does it do that? Fate of Nations contains a number of love songs with the same theme (come back to me / calling to you / offering love), down to the inclusion of a cover song with that theme.</p><p>The original love songs in FoN use images and metaphors Robert had used in love songs from the Zep era, (and in The Only One, from Jimmy's only solo album, <strong>Outrider</strong>, from 88. <strong>The Only One</strong> is a category unto itself). Robert will use again many of these themes, symbols, metaphors, etc, in the Page/Plant era.</p><p>For funsies, Fate of Nations even contains a ‘political’ song, ‘<strong>Network News</strong>’, which match the presence of a 'political' song in Carry Fire, “<strong>New World</strong>” and a breakup song to an identified female lover (<strong>29 Palms.</strong>) But I'm not going to claim Robert did that on purpose. I mean, he might have, for all we know (don't think for a second this man does anything unthinkingly when it comes to his music, down to the last detail) but I for my part won't be cutting it that thin.</p><p>Fate of Nations contains songs which mention Jimmy Page explicitly (<strong>Calling to you</strong>) and in epithet (<strong>Memory song -Hello Hello, </strong>“prince of cool”). Then there is a number of songs which I identify as linked to Jimmy because of the imagery, themes, or symbols. (<strong>Down to the sea, The Greatest Gift –</strong> that’s a recent discovery currently blowing my mind.) (and very likely <strong>Come into my life</strong>, but I need to think about this one more. Aaaand <strong>Promised Land</strong>, but again, must look into this more deeply... OH GOD THE WORK IS NEVER DONE.)</p><p>And last but certainly not least, the mirroring to end them all: <strong>Fate of Nations</strong> was released the year before Robert's reunion with Jimmy Page in 1994. At the time, Jimmy was in a popular, critically acclaimed collaboration with vocalist/songwriter/hot blond David Coverdale (<strong>"The Coverdale/Page Project"</strong>) a collaboration Robert Plant very openly and, uh, exhuberantly hated with his whole being, to the point of public embarrassment (I think it was cute).</p><p>Were Jimmy and Coverdale a thing? I have absolutely no idea; I don’t even have an opinion. All I know is that the photos that promoted their collaboration had a degree of, uh, suggestion, which frankly were as subtle as a brick. A quick search will explain most quickly and clearly what I mean. I don’t know what happened backstage, but I know what Jimmy wanted it to look like in those photos. (NOT TEXTUAL ANALYSIS you’ll say, and very well said, and I wish I could leave it only in the sublime realm of poetry and art, but when I said context I meant context. These songs don’t happen in a vacuum, do they?)</p><p>--Here we should point at another core theme in Jimmy’s and Robert’s relationship: they live their story in the world stage; if ever there was a good time to use the word ‘obscene’ – as in, something not fit to put on stage, in view of the public –I’m a classicist. Robert and Jimmy said FUCK THAT and went totally for it. I love them.</p><p> </p><p>Soooo if Fate of Nations was a summoning spell, we could say that the “calling” worked. I'm not saying the album did the trick on its own, of course. Jimmy had admittedly been wanting to work with Robert again for years, so the urge was there, but Robert was busy building his solo career. Now Robert changed tack, so we can say "The C/P Project" was a summoning spell in its own right, of a slightly different nature.</p><p>Here started a new era in their working and personal relationship we’ll refer to as the Page/Plant era, or P/P, during which they released the album <strong>No Quarter</strong> (will make a point to distinguish it from the song) and <strong>Walking to Clarksdale.</strong> Both contain important songs for unpicking the Jimbert, and we’ll be talking about them quite a bit.</p><p>Point is, <strong>Carry Fire</strong> the album seems to want to recreate to a considerable extent the spirit of <strong>Fate of Nations,</strong> hoping perhaps it does for Robert what FoN managed to do (I don’t call it “a summoning spell” in my fic for nothing.)</p><p> </p><p>Now, a few of the songs in Carry Fire seem to have been written intentionally to work as a direct call back to a particular song or a strong, distinct theme from Robert’s catalogue related to Jimmy Page. They work in pairs. We have already mentioned one of these pairs: (<strong>New world - Network News</strong>, though you'll find Robert stated New World is a callback to <strong>Immigrant Song</strong>; it is, subverting the spirit of glorious savagery for unmitigated criticism of the conquerors, most likely in the Spanish tradition of plunder, convert, and commit human and cultural genocide.) But there are other pairs.</p><p> </p><p>The strongest, most easily identified of these pairs is <strong>A Way With Words</strong> / <strong>The Rain Song.</strong> They are connected by the theme of “<strong>the seasons of emotion”,</strong> which The Rain Song established, and AWWW takes up again. (We shall give them its own chapter.)</p><p><strong>Carry Fire</strong> the song, with its Eastern-ish, Moroccan-ish sound, reaches back musically (and therefore thematically, bear with me) to the 94 P/P album ‘<strong>No Quarter</strong>’ (the album of their reunion) and evokes <strong>Morocco</strong> as a theme. Morocco is a crucial landmark in Robert’s and Jimmy’s relationship since 1975, when they went on a long journey alone together to the south of the Atlas mountains, and wrote <strong>Achilles Last Stand</strong> when they returned. We will also talk about this later. "Carry Fire" is a song about passion and desire; it looks back to the very, very beginning (when Robert was still “a stranger” in the beloved’s "Promised land") and is about acknowledging mutual scars.</p><p><strong>Heaven Sent</strong> is thickly connected with the theme of Jimmy as an angel or a godly figure, which features very prominently in several songs from <strong>Walking to Clarksdale. </strong>It’s about forgiving, and about not giving up in the quest to get the beloved back. Robert did once say he thought of Jimmy as so far above as a guitar player, he was "a little left from heaven." There's the Angel with a Broken Wing thing from the Zep era (the icon from 77) and hell, Jimmy was (is?) a believer and practitioner of a religion, Thelema, which among many other things proposes that you can contact the divine through sex (really good sex with the right partner) (no I shit you not. It's a bit more complicated than that but not much more XD). And hell, I just think Robert connect Jimmy as Godly figure in the sense of a Maker, His Maker, who taught him so much about music and life and himself; or even as a father, when he refers to his Zep days as his "childhood" (to music, but it seems Robert metaphorically equates his life in music as his actual life.) So there, that's a start for you.</p><p><strong>Keep it hid</strong>, interestingly, talks about a “silver key in a golden cup” which is uuuh magick/ male-female /sexual imagery in Robert’s earlier work (actually not just his work, he borrows it), also most closely connecting with material found in WtC. There is also a photo from a shoot to promote No Quarter the album which shows Jimmy offering the onlooker a key. Robert has something in his hand (a cup???) and a sort of Asian Virgin Mary blesses them both from above and everything's orange. </p><p><strong>The May Queen</strong> as a theme (from paganism and ancient Brit tradition) is something that’s always interested Robert, which is why I didn’t think about it much at first or look for connections. It made sense for Robert to write a song about it and not mean anything beyond it.</p><p>But then I fricking thought, hey, it’s a love song, and it’s in first place in the album, and it’s THIS album, which is painstakingly created, although it still works on its own, imho it does double-duty: in this broad exploration of their love story in song, it seems weird that Robert would leave out <strong>Stairway to Heaven</strong>, song of songs for Robert and Jimmy. </p><p>(For funsies, my lil girl said the other day while listening to Stairway, laying me flat, "hey! Robert could see into the future, because he knew he would be writing a song about this, The May Queen!" *sob* Just like her mum, looking for connections. Awwwww...)</p><p><strong>Dance with you tonight</strong> is jam packed with explicit, verbatim references to Zeppelin songs, titles or lines. We’ll look into those. The job of these references is to steer the mind of the listener firmly towards the band, and give strong clues without naming names of who is the beloved in the song. Beyond that, we might look a bit into the specific songs it refers to, see if they bring any more light on the subject, or just because it’s fun, fuck it.</p><p>It also connects through themes and metaphors and words with songs from the length and breadth of Robert’s career. It’s a compendium and a bit of a monster in this sense. It wants to be. It’s a hymn to the entire relationship, a celebration of the best stuff in it. A justification or an apology, if you will, of what makes it worth it to come back together one last time.</p><p>Aaaand I’m sure I’m missing stuff, dammit.</p><p> </p><p>ANYWAY. This was the summary of the case for Carry Fire and its individual songs being written intentionally and consciously with references to Robert’s work, and most specifically to songs about Jimmy and him. It’s full of clear parallels both to songs and to an entire album (and one might argue, though one would rather not, to a specific situation in their lives.)</p><p>To expand and build the case further, we have to look into the songs. We’ll start with DWYT and go from there.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>(*)  A note, if I may, before we proceed to take the song apart brick by brick: I’m not saying Robert sits there and works seven pages of literary analysis before he uses a particular word or metaphor. We know (because it’s obvious, and because he tells us <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rollingstone.com%2Fmusic%2Fmusic-features%2Frobert-plant-interview-digging-deep-led-zeppelin-john-bonham-1068391%2F&amp;t=ZjljNjg1ZWVkZWI2YmE3MmY1Y2YwZTc2NjA0MzAyMDZjZmMxNzJhYyw5MTI1MjcxNmI2YmQ4NGQ4YWVjNTNiMjJlZWM3ODVlYjZjYWZjMjIz&amp;ts=1607104478">in a recent interview about <strong>Subterranea</strong>,</a> his latest release, that in CF and in the lyrics of many other albums, he inserts refs to other songs, and uses images and symbols he has used before, “for continuity”, that is with the intention of connecting ideas, create a cohesive whole from the Zep era to now; we find he picks his words very very carefully and deliberately, both in songs and for example in Jimmy’s tribute, to create complex, layered metaphors, both to obscure the meaning and/or the subject, <em>and</em> to suggest it (say, the ‘angel at the gates’ of <strong>Heaven Sent,</strong> or the seasons of <strong>AWWW</strong> or <strong>The May Queen, </strong>or the ‘Promised Land’ of <strong>Carry Fire,</strong> etc.<strong>)</strong> Someone who has done some decent digging into his work will eventually catch it – say, me. Mr. Jimmy Page esq. will catch it instantly.</p><p>Other times, I’m sure, he just writes what comes to him spontaneously, and what comes to him are the symbols and metaphors he goes to repeatedly because they please him, and sound true to what he wants to say. Having said that, RP is very careful with his choice of words, in interviews, in writings, definitely in songs. Other lyricists might be more “meh whatever” but not Robert, certainly not when it's about Jimmy.</p><p>Either way, when a poet uses a metaphor repeatedly in a similar context, embedded in a similar theme, next to similar words, that metaphor or symbol, that word, and its meaning in this poet’s extended work, expands and grows, and acquires new layers of meaning. It connects songs together and so, wider themes. It might have come spontaneously to Robert, without an intention to generate seven pages of literary analysis, but once it’s written down, it DOES connect to other stuff he’s written, and a deeper reading into his work, and that particular symbol or metaphor, is possible and justified, and basically “not a stretch.” Just because it’s not a conscious and intentional choice, doesn’t mean the connection is not there.</p><p> </p><p>Anyway, Jimmy knows this poetic universe intimately. Like Leds points out (and i’m quoting),” <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DDDo4CA13LbY&amp;t=ZWIyZDdhYmNjODhiMmVhNDUyZDY0ZmQ4OWZlYTY2YTljYjEwZWYxYyw4MjA0OTdkN2Y3NTg1OWNkOTgzYTU2NDViMDViYjM0NjVlYzhiNmVl&amp;ts=1607104478">he always pays tribute to Robert’s lyrics</a> as much as his singing, not commenting on the content(*) but the skill and examples, like Stairway, when it appeared almost magical. AND Jimmy is sooo into patterns.” He would 100% get the idea of the world/cycle here, because it’s repeated in <strong>AWWW</strong> more clearly, because it was developed in <strong>When the world was young,</strong> in the P/P era, and it was established in <strong>The Rain Song</strong>. …Just as he would understand exactly what Robert was saying in his tribute. Threaded in the tribute to Jimmy’s talent and the great work they did together, a tender reminder of the other half of their relationship, which people in general may not catch, but Jimmy would. (Awwwww.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. "Dance With You Tonight" or The One Where Robert Spells It Out (again)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>In which we take 'Dance With You Tonight' apart line by line, and start sketching out the symbols, imagery, metaphors, and themes which we'll be looking at in following chapters.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Please Sonymusic pls don't sue me for copyright infringement. No evil designs informed the writing of this chapter, no economic gain was derived from the reproduction of the lyrics, and if anything else I will get a couple more punters your way. I'm nothing but a measly insignificant fan doing fannish things out of love and passion and nerdiness. This counts as fair use, right? Right?</p><p>12 DECEMBER: EDITED TO INCLUDE CONTRIBUTIONS</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>let’s go, smurfs. DANCE WITH YOU TONIGHT</strong>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>The full lyrics as they appear in the album leaflet:</p><p>*[...] are amends showing changes from printed lyrics to final recorded version.</p><p> </p><p>And now the carnival is over</p><p>Someone turned out the light</p><p>Our fields of plenty filled with clover</p><p>So long ago and out of sight</p><p>This little light that keeps on shining</p><p>All through the darkness through the night</p><p>That ever more will keep reminding</p><p>The road is long the flame is bright</p><p> </p><p>And if there’s one more time I can dance with you</p><p>Let me dance with you tonight</p><p>Maybe the last chance our hearts</p><p>Will dance into the lovers night</p><p> </p><p>Out in the land of never ending</p><p>The rich parade the roar of life</p><p>We shared a world forever changing</p><p>Through dancing days and wondrous nights</p><p>I offered up the secret places</p><p>Revealed the magic of the land</p><p>All bound by blood and lipstick traces</p><p>‘till time conspired to steal our crown.</p><p> </p><p>(And if there's one more time...)</p><p> </p><p>Come on and dance another mile</p><p>Come on and wear [bring me] your late late smile</p><p>[Are] The flames still burning bright</p><p>Across the days, across the years</p><p> </p><p>If there’s one more, only one more</p><p>Only one more night</p><p>Come on and dance with me baby</p><p>Make me feel alright, make feel alright, feel alright</p><p> </p><p>[Bring me your late late smile</p><p>Come on and dance another mile]</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It’s really not a cryptic song at all. I mean, if we cut to the chase, “OUR CROWN.” That’s it. That’s all you should need.</p><p>But one comes to it with the “naaah impossible” goggles. I’m here to fuck this goggles up, by showing you how much work Robert put into these lyrics, and how much stuff is happening here, which can only be spotted after looking into 50 years of life and deeds, and paying attention to the goddamn song lyrics.</p><p> </p><p>So let’s break it down, shall we.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>And now the carnival is over</strong>
</p><p>          So, it’s over: the Carnival, the parade, the charade, the whole Zeppelin circus. Everything Robert detests about the music industry. They’re 70-years-old now. They can stop the bloody nonsense.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Someone turned out the light</strong>
</p><p>It could just mean exactly what it says; when you exit the room you turn out the light. When a show is over, the lights go off.</p><p>But it could also very well be a reference to the opening lines of the song <strong>No Quarter</strong> (LZ, ‘Houses of the Holy’, 1973), “<em>Close the door, put out the lights”</em>.</p><p>No Quarter, the song, is a big deal for Jimmy and Robert. They named their reunion album in 1994 after it. Offended lots of people by doing so. I was going to develop the thing here but since it keeps growing, it’s going to have its own chapter. We’ll be talking about <strong>The Dream</strong> and <strong>Love as a Struggle. </strong></p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Our fields of plenty filled with clover</strong>
</p><p>          <strong>* ALARM: First verbatim Led Zeppelin ref:</strong> FIELDS OF CLOVER, from ‘<strong>Hots on for Nowhere’</strong>: “I don’t ask that my field’s full of clover.”</p><p>          ‘Hots on for Nowhere’, from Presence 1976 (same album as <strong>Achilles Last Stand.</strong>) Very complex, layered lyrics that deserve an essay all to themselves but. The notion is, fields of clover mean plenty and mean good stuff. So, how happy we were and how much good stuff we have shared* (*”our”)</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>So long ago and out of sight</strong>
</p><p>          <em>Oh</em>, said Fishie. How… interesting. So, this all happened once upon a time, and it was… a secret. *Spock eyebrow* Fascinating. First line that stuck with me when I listened to this song.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>This little light that keeps on shining</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>All through the darkness, through the night</strong>
</p><p>Like many other things in this song, it’s either pretty straightforward or you can take it much further. In the simple (and perfectly accurate I think) version, this is the love that has endured through the worst times. Love and the lover as light is not an uncommon metaphor.</p><p>Now, we can take it places because the image of love (and the beloved) as a light that guides appears in other songs, and a particular set of them with plenty dancing and seas and sailing too, as in sailing away, freedom. These things seem to like going together in Robert’s lyrics. We’ll be talking about that when we discuss What Is And Never Should Be / Achilles Last Stand / No Quarter / God knows what else.</p><p> </p><p>*Ah, edits, edits. So there is a song in <strong>Walking to Clarskdale, "Shining in the light," </strong>which I sometimes see as a pair with DWYT, because of light, and because of dancing.</p><p> </p><p></p><div class="ujudUb">
  <p>"<em>Big boat stealing through the <strong>darkness</strong> / Will you bring to me my love? / Will you bring to me my <strong>only love?</strong></em></p>
</div><div class="ujudUb">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="ujudUb">
  <p>
    <em>In the night the light of <strong>oneness</strong> / And the one light guides you home / And the <strong>keeper</strong> turns his cards alone</em>
  </p>
</div><div class="ujudUb">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="ujudUb">
  <p>
    <em>From this shore my <strong>memory</strong> wandered / And I danced upon the <strong>sea</strong> / <strong>Can I dance with you upon the sea?</strong></em>
  </p>
</div><div class="ujudUb">
  <p>
    <br/>
    <em>Oh! how I love your brown-eyed madness / And your beauty was exposed / Now your memory's grained into my bones</em>
  </p>
</div><div class="ujudUb WRZytc">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="ujudUb WRZytc">
  <p>
    <em><strong>Shining in my light - shining in the light</strong>"</em>
  </p>
</div><div class="ujudUb WRZytc">
  <p> </p>
</div><p>Yes, yes, I am aware of the brown eyes. It could be actually about someone else totally not Jimmy. It could be Najma Akhtar, the frankly amazing vocalist who gave the replica in 'The Battle of Nevermore' in the Unledded tour, and was Robert's girlfriend for a while too, so I've heard. Perfectly possible. </p><p>But there's the <strong>Sea</strong> (this will need a whole chapter...), there's the <strong>Only Love</strong>, there's the <strong>light</strong> that guides through the <strong>darkness</strong> and guides you <strong>home</strong> (and I always forget, but the light is a big deal in magic and Thelema and religion and stuff, all of which connects to Jimmy), there's the "<strong>bring back my love"</strong>, there's the "<strong>oneness</strong>" (being together, being complete), there's the <strong>keeper</strong> (of the gloom? *<strong>The Rain Song</strong>), there's the <strong>memory</strong>, there's the <strong>dancing</strong> of course, and finally, the "<strong>shining in the light"</strong>, which I think means being out together where everyone can see you.</p><p>So basically, there's a lot. If this is indeed about Jimmy, considering how much denial there is in the world, Robert, I figure you could have said "green eyes" and fuck it, but anyhoo, what do I know.</p><p>As usual, I find it weird to find 4 fricking lines of connections with Jimmy songs can be outweighed by one word (or an entire life by one "misconstrued"* -- see Jimmy's pseudo-no homo from 2000and... was it 4 or 14? Yes, it would make a considerable difference. Ouchie.)</p><p>What I think is worth retaining for the future here is the Sea. I keep finding it everywhere. We'll look into it at some point.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>That evermore will keep reminding</strong>
</p><p>          Sooo do we consider ‘<strong>Evermore</strong>’ as a reference or nah?</p><p>
  <strong>MISS_DEYORA_ASH'S CONTRIBUTION:</strong>
</p><p>"About evermore - first I thought a definite no, since it's just a single word that makes sense in that sentence, but then I realized that 'forevermore' means the exact same thing and is way more common. People will actually use forevermore in a normal conversation if they feel particularly poetic. AND - both grammatically and lyrically and metrically (that is not a word I think. In the meter. Rhythm. You KNOW.) forevermore could be substituted in place of 'that evermore' perfectly fine. It could even be argued to be MORE natural, in my humble opinion: "this little light that keeps on shining/all through the darkness, through the night/forevermore will keep reminding/our journey's long, our flame is bright" This means that making it 'that evermore' is a conscious, deliberate decision. So I say YES it is a reference, it counts. And Battle of Evermore TOTALLY has Jimbert vibes."</p><p>I think you have a big point. Not to mention that Robert IS jam-packing this to the high heavens. So I'm saying amen to that. Evermore is a ref.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Our journey’s long, our flame is bright</strong>
</p><p>It means what it says. “Our story together goes way back and it’s still ongoing.” Life is a journey. Whatever.</p><p>But also, the Long Journey is something very Robert and very Jimbert. Robert identifies with Joni Mitchell’s “Amelia” which talks about life as an unending journey, “so your life becomes a travelogue” (beautiful song, check it out). And even more than that, Robert’s and Jimmy’s relationship has happened mostly on the road. From touring to their holidays together here and there (India, Thailand, Martinica, idk) and The Ultimate Trip <em>par excellance,</em> Morocco, they haven’t had a home, they had a journey.</p><p>As for The Flame. Lots of flames everywhere in this album, aptly called Carry Fire. They are in <strong>Heaven Sent </strong>(<em>“He [the angel* at the gates*] keeps the flame of everlasting love”</em>) and in <strong>A Way With Words</strong> (<em>“is your heart still warm / a little flame, a special place”</em>.) So, like the Light, this is the love, the passion (I don’t have to tell anyone flames and fire are about desire, do I?)</p><p><em>“There’s an angel at the gates, singing”</em> (HS) – we’ll be covering the entirety of Heaven Sent because it’s the only way to tackle that monster. Just a note that in Robert’s songs, especially in the P/P, Christian religious imagery is used a lot in songs about Jimmy. Actually, people went ahead and took for granted that songs like <strong>“When the world was young”</strong> was about, say, God, but I will argue very strongly that this is absolutely not the case.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>And if there’s one more time I can dance with you</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Let me dance with you tonight</strong>
</p><p>          OH MY HEART.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>It’s the last chance</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Our hearts will dance</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Into the lover’s night</strong>
</p><p>          OH MY POOR HEART</p><p>          Now. Spelling it out because I feel like it: Last chance. Tick tock. WE’RE OLD BABAY.</p><p>          ALSO. Just in case anybody was thinking of no homo’ing this, we have LOVERS explicitly mentioned here, on top of the fires and stuff.</p><p>          Aaaaand dancing. There is one hell of a lot to say about dancing, and seeing as it’s the title of the song, maybe we should talk about it a little? Quickly, off the top of my head:</p><ul>
<li>
<strong>Achilles Last Stand </strong>(LZ, Presence, 76): “<em>To laugh aloud, Dancing as we fought the crowds”</em>
</li>
<li>
<strong>Wah Wah</strong> (P/P, No Quarter, 94) “<em>So give me peace of mind and let me dance / Bury all the pain of years beneath the sand”</em>
</li>
<li>
<strong>Wonderful One </strong>(same): <em>“Shall we dance and never stop / Take my hand and stop the clock /From turning over”</em>
</li>
<li>
<strong>Shining in the Light </strong>(P/P, WtClarksdale 1998): <em>“And I dance upon the sea, can I dance with you upon the sea”</em>
</li>
<li>
<strong>When the world was young </strong>(same) <em>“High on a hill /Home of my heart, take me dancing /Round and round / Carry me still / Sweet home of my heart, take me dancing”</em> (sweet home of my heart kajsgfdshfgjkhfg Robert omg)</li>
<li>And of course there’s plenty grooving and such in LZ. Dancing is joy and fun and being with your lover, and fucking. (<strong>Rock and roll,</strong> LZ IV, 71)</li>
</ul><p>In the P/P era especially, the word appears surrounded by light, and the sea, and freedom, etc, stuff that connects with other songs all the way back to LZ and to CF, and imho are mostly, if not all, about Jimmy, an impression you get precisely from putting them all in front of your eyes (and ears) and watch them stretch tiny tentacle-threads and weave themselves into one big beautiful coherent tapestry. You can have a lot of nerdy fun while you’re at it, but mostly get the impression that for Robert Plant being with Jimmy Page is a thing of joy and wonder. So das nice.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Out in the land of neverending</strong>
</p><p>          I think about the “Promised Land” mentioned in ‘<strong>Carry Fire</strong>’ (the one that turns the I in the song “<em>Inside out and upside down”</em>) In Celebration Day we hear <em>“I’m joining a band / I’m going to the promised land”</em> so I’m fairly certain that’s what Robert is talking about here.</p><p>          In any case, without the links, it still conveys the idea of an enchanted place removed from time. Makes me think of eternal youth, a place where idk rock stars can be elevated to the category of gods and myths and live on forever as they were in the apogee of their beauty and power and fame.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <strong> The rich parade, the roar of life</strong>
</p><p>       The Parade evokes the Carnival, but in this line the image is somewhat more positive, not so disparaging? Anything with life in it is a good image for Robert methinks.</p><p>          Anyway, in this song, in this context, it conveys to me the idea of the world of rock stardom with all its earthly delights, or just generally the world when you live a charmed life. This world still exists but the I in the song is removed from it <em>(“<strong>out</strong> in the land”)</em></p><p> </p><p><strong> <em>We</em> </strong> <strong> saw the world forever changing</strong></p><p>          THE WORLD. Okay. Another big deal.</p><p>The world also keeps changing in <strong>A Way With Words</strong>; it’s a big theme in the song (<em>“Once again our world will change”</em>).</p><p>AWWW (lol, A Way With Words) is worth mentioning here, because it’s one of The Great Pairs in this album, songs that seem to respond or emerge from another specific song from the past (more on that on AO3.) Thematically, AWWW is a callback to <strong>The Rain Song</strong>. TRS, as you all surely know, is about a lover who experiences a rebirth of his (yes what, fuck it) love, when it seemed like it was almost gone <em>(“this is the springtime of my loving, the second season I am to know … I watched the fire that grew so low.”)</em> The “conclusion” of the song is what Led’s called “Robert’s wisdom” : <em>“the seasons of emotion, like the wind, they rise and fall” (and “upon us all a little rain must fall / but it’s just a little rain, that’s all.”)</em></p><p>NOW.<a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dng5CzvCvfOE&amp;t=ZGQxMzZjMWY2ZWI4NWJjYjU5OGRlYmM1ZWQyZjU3MWM5NjhhZTY0MCwyMDMyMjQ0YjFiMzFmNTNhYjFlN2QzYTRlNGJlNmU4YWZiZGU5ZGQ1&amp;ts=1607104478"> In his tribute to Jimmy on occasion of his lifetime accolade award from Classic Rock magazine in 2007, </a>Robert says,</p><p><em>“I was always amazed I could find lyric and melody to complement the roaring <strong>Achilles Last Stand</strong> or the caressing bleak beautiful (muse?) that is <strong>The Rain Song.</strong> JUST EXAMPLES OF THE CONTRASTS WE EXPERIENCED. The terrain, often bleak, sometimes remote, sometimes immersed in love, has been spectacular.”</em> (emphasis mine)</p><p>          Regarding that, 2 things:</p><p><strong>ALS</strong>, in my view, represents the absolute peak of happiness for these two, the best time they had together, back in those days. <strong>TRS</strong> represents their low points, the times when they were not so good together, or not together at all. And in the quote above, Robert confirmed this intuition and nearly killed me with a shoot of “GOD I WAS RIGHT.”</p><p>Second:  “The terrain” is a funny choice of words. The natural choice here seems to be “the journey” or “the road.” Buuuut it’s not. The terrain. The land? …The world??</p><p>Either way, what we have is the idea of something you travel across, where you encounter different uuuh… terrains XD. Different weather? –  It keeps CHANGING, is what I’m getting at. Bleak: bad times; Remote: no relationship; Immersed in love: good times. There you go: The seasons of emotion. A cycle. Something round that spins and spins and the seasons change but never stops spinning, and winter is as inevitable as the spring. Like, you know, the <em>world</em>.</p><p>In 93 Robert released <strong>Fate of Nations, </strong>the “proto-Carry Fire,” which contains a number of songs which explicitly call to Jimmy <strong>(Calling to you) </strong>or refer to him (<strong>Hello Hello- Memory Song</strong>) or were thematically in the ballpark of calling to a lover (and settling down / getting married. Awww) (“<strong>Down to the sea</strong>”, the cover “<strong>If I was a carpenter”</strong>, and I have to look more closely at <strong>Come into my life </strong>and JESUS, <strong>THE GREATEST GIFT</strong>, OMG, WE GOT ANOTHER)</p><p>We have WORLD in “<strong>Calling to you</strong>”<em> (</em>the one that has “OH JIMMEH!” in the coda) “<em>Long before the mountains cry for Adam and Eve, oh / All the world we knew was fire, and still was the seed / Ah, just the seed Oh, you can hear it now, /It’s callin’ to you.” – </em>Idk you but there are beginnings here and seeds - mutual children? (Have you read my thing on Achilles Last Stand?) things that have GROWN, aaaand are CALLING tooo someone now. Aaaand apparently we have worlds also in <strong>The Greatest Gift</strong>,<em> “I feel the world that moves inside me” </em>(and more, as well as dreams and hidden things and jhsdfgjhfgjfhgf god Robert I can’t keep up.)</p><p>Then, taking up the subject of the beginning of the world, of everything, in <strong>Walking to Clarksdale</strong> (P/P 1998) we find “<strong>When the world was young”</strong>(*) which seems to cement this idea that everything (the world, their lives) began with <em>them</em>. With the band, with their love. (Which I find unbearably romantic btw.) This idea is reinforced by “<strong>When I was a child”</strong>, which again takes up the idea of youth/childhood, times of innocence, beginning, and I connect it with Jimbert because it goes “<em>When I was a child I dreamed a dream of you … When I was a child I held you in my dreams**”</em>. (To further add to the hypothesis that the “you” in WIWAC is Jimmy, please <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DI5thZSDz2iQ&amp;t=YzNiMTdmYzhiNTY1MmZjNzFjODk1YmVkNjA2MzJlYjdkZjgwNzhlMSw5OWRjYzM0NWI3NWQxYmM1Yjc2NDNjNTIyYzBkY2Q3Y2RkNTZjZTUz&amp;ts=1607104478">have a look at this priceless video in which Robert makes passionate love to the mike during the first section of the song, and when it’s done, he turns to Jimmy in the less compromised half of the song [“<em>Once I was a soldier”</em>] to serenade him silly where it’s not so in your fucking face. These two I swear…)</a></p><p>(Ah, guess where else I remembered a world: <strong>"The Rover,"</strong> (Physical Graffitti, 1975.) We... will obviously be having a thorough look at that one, since we also have candles burning low, time as the enemy of lovers / new world rising (cycles) aaaand ... oof. Okay. So The Rover is a Jimbert song. Great. Remind me later.)</p><p>LEDBYTHREADS’ ADDITION: In the transcripts of Robert’s addresses to the audience in the Earl Court concerts in 75 (just before they went to Morocco) Robert develops the theme of Zeppelin having a childhood, himself being the babe.</p><p>To sum up, there is a LOT behind Robert’s use of the “world that changes again and again” idea. Added to AWWW, I think in this case it summarises the ups and downs they have experienced in their relationship, how the circumstances affected their lives, the many seasons, winters and springs, they have known.</p><p>It also contains the idea that these changes are beyond their control. The world changes on them, the seasons change.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Through dancing days and wondrous nights</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>          ALARM: Second explicit ref to LZ song, “Dancing days.”</strong>
</p><p>Ok first of all, obvious meaning: lots of fun and excitement was had by all in this love story.        </p><p>Second layer: it’s a confirmed ref to a LZ song of the same title (Presence, 1976). And maybe that’s all it wants to be, one more reference to steer the mind of the listener firmly in the LZ direction, <em>so that there is no doubt what and who this song is about –</em> a love story and a person closely linked to Led Zeppelin. (Maybe Jonesy?)</p><p>Then again, if you go have a look at the song lyrics, whoa. What I first saw that made me do a double take is the “woman who knows” thing. Because we have no idea what that means, at all, but we find something like that in WIANSB (coda: <em>“Everybody I know seems to know me well but they’ll never gonna know that I move like hell</em>” and in ALS: <em>“blowing a glancing kiss to those who think they know.</em>”</p><p>            The song seems to me, because of music as much as lyrics, to be kind of a cynical, bored take on meeting and courting a girl (“You'll be my only, /My one and only,/ Is that the way it should start?” - whoa boy - of course what it means is, ‘these are the kind of words you are supposed to use when picking up a girl, but they’re bollocks, and we all know that.’ <em>She</em> definitely knows what they’re on about: <em>“You told your mother I’d get you home but you didn’t say that I got no car”</em> — she’s in this for a reason and it’s not about romance, it’s about sex, and nothing serious is really starting here.</p><p><em> “Dancing days are here again”</em> (more lyrics here, can’t quote the whole thing) as in going through the motions of behaving in a certain way. I read it as “ugh, time to be Robert Plant the Flower Child and have casual sex while putting on the pretense of being romantic and serious when we all know it’s not.”</p><p>            <em>“You are my woman who knows”</em> reinforces the theme of something secret kept from us, and “<em>You know it’s all in my heart”</em> suggests something more meaningful under all of that charade, but we never hear what. — Now we find a reference to this particular song in this one<strong>, Dance with you tonight.</strong> Interesting.</p><p>            Now, <em>“I saw a lion, he was standing alone, with a tadpole in a jar”</em>, might be a fabulously out there reference to Jimmy, or to himself (the Lion thing) but the tadpole in a jar?? GKJHGjg idk tadpoles become frogs…? Which you kiss and become princes?? —now THIS is what I call stretching. I am following a crazy thread here, I have no other refs to back it up. Only Robert really knows what the fuck was he on about here.  But can you tell the difference with other things I deduce from other images and metaphors elsewhere? I hope so anyway.</p><p> </p><p>(Okay, get ready, this verse is a ride.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>I offered up the secret places</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Revealed the magic of the land</strong>
</p><p>I think this is about Bron-Yr-Aur and Headley Grange and Morocco. It was Robert who used to spend his summers in dilapidated cottages near the Welsh border; he took Jimmy there for some peace and quiet, away from the frantic pace they had kept for years, with work and tours and women and drugs. In those quieter, magical, secret places, they wrote some of their best songs together. <strong>Stairway</strong>, for starters. <strong>B-Y-A stomp</strong> too. (This song is Important. We’ll talk about that some other time.)</p><p>So in this song we have the carnival, we have the roar of life in the world, and we now have these places too, secret not because we don’t know about them, but because of what they really mean to them, what happened there (BEAUTIFUL LOVE) and magical because of the magic they made there together.</p><p>Nnnnow. A thing Jimmy and Robert like to do is insert sexual innuendo everywhere. They’re very very naughty like that. Knowing that, it’s not completely out of the question that “I offered up the secret places” means. Well. Idk. “In Through The Out Door”? You know.</p><p> </p><p>Leds pointed out very wisely that in B-Y-A a kind of power shift started, and concluded in Headley Grange, in which Robert grew and matured and flourished into his Golden Godly self. Jimmy had started as his senior in every way (Robert’s words) but in the years since they met, he’d been learning learning learning, and in these places, where they wrote some of the best stuff ever fucking written, Robert confirmed himself as an equal in this partnership. (*<em>ALMOST</em> an equal, I can hear Jimmy pointing out.) (And Robert going <em>EXCUSE ME?!)</em></p><p>– In these lines, he <em>offers</em> secrets and he <em>reveals</em> magic. He’s <em>giving</em> stuff and <em>uncovering</em> things for his beloved.  Jimmy did that for him in the beginning, and in these places Robert gave something of his own back, and wonderful stuff happened.</p><p>(The Most Wonderful, Jimmy, remember when I came up with most of the lyrics of Stairway right there and then and blew your top off? Oh, what an amazing time we had there…)</p><p>I could go on a bit about The Magic of the Land and how Jimmy’s magic was more removed from the earthly and Robert brought this other kind of magic but. You know what. Some other time.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>All bound by blood and lipstick traces</strong>
</p><p>          Interesting. No idea. I don’t have enough information. Bound by blood? Idk. Did they go through some sort of ritual? Does blood stand for something else? *shrugs* Ideas?</p><p>
  <strong>*******IMPORTANT EDIT: (AAAAARGHHH) LEDS YOU’RE RIGHT, YOU’RE RIGHT!!!*****</strong>
</p><p>We talked about this but I wasn’t totally convinced and I didn’t know how to put it, and I was in such a damn hurry because I’ve been working on this for a few days many hours a day now – but I SEE IT NOW</p><p><em>Bound by blood and lipstick traces.</em> </p><p>Lipstick traces: I read this either as “wipe the girlfriends’ lipstick off their mouths” as in, put aside all these women, now it’s time for you and me. OR, in between all the women, with traces of their girlfriends still on them, the two of them had their thing (Leds goes for the second one. Me too.)</p><p>“Bound by blood” it’s in such a prominent place, I thought, how intriguing, what’s it doing there. Would Robert really refer to some sort of witchy ritual in this song?? Hmmm doesn’t sound likely but what do I know.</p><p>
  <strong>Leds said: bound as in boundaries. As in the limits of a field. </strong>
</p><p>If it was somewhere else, I would be a lot more uncertain. But it’s next to the lipstick traces, and now I think I’m totally with Leds that it’s the second meaning above, that they make room for themselves in between the women of their lives, sort of surrounded by them. And WHAT ELSE would surround them, as well as lipstick wearers? (wives, girlfriends, lovers, paramours, whatever): THE FAMILY --&gt; the blood.</p><p>Their love story happened in the middle of all that. Surrounded by it, it marked the bOUNDARIES of what they could have, the limitations.</p><p>lakhsdgfsjkhgfjhgfdjh I love it when that happens.</p><p>         Idk what you people think?</p><p>OOOOOH LOOKIE HERE!! MISS_DEYORA_ASH TO THE RESCUE:</p><p>"<span class="u"><strong>it's another Zep reference</strong></span>. "I know I must have<strong> lipstick traces</strong>" from <strong>In My Time of Dying.</strong> A cover, but since it came before this song it can easily be referenced anyway, and I am of the firm believe that to cover that song means that it must have meant something to them, or at least to Robert. Also, have you SEEN IT LIVE? It's actual sex on stage."</p><p>ABSOFRICKINGLUTEL. How about that?? </p><p>AND:  "I take the lyric as them being bound by those two things, rather it being two things apart. And bound as in rituals, weddings, boundaries, all of those. These are things that connect them - girls, blood maybe more metaphorical as heartbreak, or more literal as physical injuries (car crashes and such). BUT they are also bound by these things, as in limited by them - girls and family."</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>(Ok here we go. Hold on to your butts. Ready?)</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>TILL TIME CONSPIRED TO STEAL OUR CROWN.</strong>
</p><p>OKAY.</p><p>
  <em>OKAY.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The short of it: Robert Plant was a god and a king once, with Led Zeppelin. They ruled. The greatest rock band ever. Record-breaking attendances and (eventually) widespread critical acclaim as well. So, here’s the crown Robert wore.</p><p> </p><p>          HOWEVER: Key word here: “<strong>OUR</strong>”</p><p>                                 <strong><em>“OUR”</em></strong></p><p>          HE <em>SHARED</em> THIS CROWN</p><p>          WITH <em>SOME OTHER PERSON</em></p><p>          FROM <em>LONG AGO AND <strong>OUT OF SIGHT</strong></em></p><p>   FROM THE<strong> LED ZEPPELIN </strong>UUUH GALAXY</p><p>          WHO ACCORDING TO THE SONG WAS <em>HIS <strong>LOVER</strong></em></p><p>          WHOM HE WANTS TO GET BACK WITH</p><p>
  <strong> <em>SO, WHO THE HELL IS THAT SOMEONE.</em> </strong>
</p><p>  </p><p>WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TELLING US HERE ROBERTPLANT. ARE YOU SAYING. ARE YOU REALLY SAYING. I MEAN. REALLY¿!?! CAN THIS BE TRUE?? I CAN'T POSSIBLY BE THE FIRST PERSON TO NOTICE THIS?!? HOW THE HELL DID IT NOT SET THE MUSIC WORLD ON FIRE?!? LIKE, 2 CHARACTERS IN A SHOW ALMOST GET PRONOUNCED AN ALMOST CANONICAL ALMOST GAY ALMOST LOVE STORY AND THE FANDOM LOSES ITS SHIT AND IT FLIES TO THE MAINSTREAM, AND IN THE MEANTIME, IN 2017 ONE OF THE BIGGEST NAMES IN THE ROCK INDUSTRY WRITES A GAY SONG (HELL, AN ENTIRE ALBUM) ABOUT BEING IN GAY LOVE FOR FIFTY YEARS WITH HIS GAY LOVER WHO HAPPENS TO BE ANOTHER OF THE BIGGEST NAMES IN THE ROCK INDUSTRY EVER, AND I'M FINDING OUT FROM A <em>SONG</em>!??!</p><p> </p><p>...Apparently, yeah. There seems to be what Leds calls a "fuck off" spell in operation around Jimmy and Robert. I honestly thought, silly me, that I would burst into the fandom and point at this line and realisation would hit everybody like it did me, but again, apparently not.</p><p>The music establishment (and press), I believe, are fully aware of Jimmy's and Robert's (bi)sexuality, and about their story, and idk because of some sort of gentleman's agreement, they have conjured up to pretend they see, hear, or know absolutely nothing, and keep their collective mouths shut. Which is nice of them. It should be none on anyone's business but the two of them, of course.</p><p>Then again, they HAVE been putting it out there since fucking 1969 when they had musical sex on stage nightly, they've put it in the lyrics, they've paraded it around the world, and they've done EVERYTHING except SAY "we are bisexual" for decades. They have never "come out", but they haven't been "in" very much either. Like Leds says, sometimes it's not about coming out, but inviting people in. I think that's what Robert and Jimmy have been doing all this time.</p><p>Unfortunately, it appears that, to the general public, it doesn't count if you don't step on a soapbox and state your sexuality for the record, so I will remain a "tin hatter" until they're both gone and people decide it's now fair to start talking. It will all appear clear as fucking day, then. It will all seem so blatant and obvious. It will be a lil bit less exhausting for us here.</p><p> </p><p>          Anyway, we finish.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Come on and dance another mile</strong>
</p><p>          Come with me on our traveling/touring love story <em>(“I’d like to go to the Atlas mountains for a couple more weeks with him before the end”</em> – Morocco - place of our gayest and happiest times - which is why the song <strong>Carry Fire</strong> has this Moroccan sound, in case you missed it.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Come on and bring me your late, late smile</strong>
</p><p>          Jimmy fixed his teeth XD – lots of smiling and fun in this story. I love it particularly in <strong>ALS</strong>, “as I turned you smiled at me”. Jimmy does have a beautiful smile.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Are the flames still burning bright</strong>
</p><p>          Flames: see above. DO YOU STILL LOVE ME BABY?</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Across the days, across the years?</strong>
</p><p>          (This story has been going on FOREVER.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>          If there’s one more, only one, only one more night</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Come on and dance with me, baby</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Make me feel alright</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Make me feel alright</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Make me feel alright</strong>
</p><p>          (This was a good love story. Made them feel good things. Aw.)</p><p>
  <strong>Put on your late, late smile</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Come on and dance another mile</strong>
</p><p>Come on, Jimmy. Our journey has been a dance. Pretty please baby. Look, I made you an entire record. Again. Baby, I want you back.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>So. <strong>Dance with you tonight, in context, with background, in 150 words or less: </strong>The Led Zeppelin Carnival is over. We’ve had our awards and our accolades. Let’s be real people. Behold, my old love, all that we’ve lived, all that we’ve known, all that we’ve given each other, all that we’ve been to each other. Remember our glory and our sweet, tender times when we were alone together. We were so happy and we had so much. And now, after many adventures away from each other, and a few fallouts, it’s the springtime of my loving for you again. I really, really, really want to get back together with you, pretty baby, it would make me so happy, it would make me feel so good. Look how humbly I come to you and how little I ask, after all that we’ve had… Come on baby. Come back to me. One last dance.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p><strong>Dance with you tonight</strong> is a hymn about that epic love story. A celebration and a summoning. Lyrics and music work together, rising to create a Jimbert anthem to call Jimmy back for one last season together, the third act of their story. A fitting ending for this colossal romance. Can’t leave it like that, Jimmylove. Let’s do this right.</p><p>The truly remarkable thing about this love story for the ages is not just its longevity, the huge public dimension of its uuuh participants, their cultural importance. All of this already makes it quite extraordinary and beautiful and exciting. But what blows my mind and keeps me hooked is the mythological dimension of this relationship.</p><p>Jimmy and Robert lived the whole thing in front of fans and photographers; they put it in their art, they’ve made beautiful songs about it; they’ve screamed it out loud from the stage, where they’ve courted and flirted and fucked each other’s brains out, ON STAGE. They’ve written their own fic, so to speak, they’ve created their own fanart. Their mythology, their symbology, their own fucking culture.</p><p>It’s the larger-than-life dimension of the thing, all that “extra-ness”, which has stolen my heart and gripped my imagination so strongly. It’s not a “real person ship”, it’s two real people who have lived their love on an almost Olympic level (as in classic mythology). In the middle of this enormous legendary enterprise that was Led Zeppelin, the secret heart of it all are two desperately romantic boys who found each other, electrified each other, completed and complemented each other, in a way very few people ever get to experience. And became rock gods. Rock gods in huge, beautiful, tremendous, Olympian GAY love. </p><p><br/>That never fucking happens. And they were fully aware of it, and that’s how they lived it: something epic, legendary, magical. And they couldn’t go ahead and say it, so they show-don’t-tell it. For both, the public/secret side of their love is a huge part of its mythological appeal. They hid it, but they put it out there. Time and time again, in a dozen different ways, they put it out there, hidden in plain sight. They longed for freedom, they longed for the sunlight, but just the same, they thrived in the extremely romantic notion of forbidden love. And they remain each other’s greatest, most devoted fans. What to us is a band, to them is their mutual child. Their songs are the way they lived that truth, the times when they could be honest and tell the world about the feelings they had to hide. *sob* And because of their wealth fame and privilege, they got to live it BIG. And hell, they just made each other feel alright.</p><p> </p><p>I am not a romantic in real life, but in art? Hell yeah. Enormous emotions, characters larger than life, long epic quests for love and glory. So I came to Led Zeppelin because of the music and in spite of Jimmy and Robert, whom I assumed must be a pair of entitled vain assholes, but now I look at these boys' work with the Jimbert beating at the heart of it, and it makes everything shine dazzlingly bright. Trust me, Jimbert achieves the impossible and it makes Led Zeppelin even better.</p><p> </p><p>Especially when you remember in 2017 Robert Plant was serenading Jimmy with an entire album to win him back.</p><p> </p><p>What's the situation now?, you may ask. Oh, no idea. But Jimmy keeps us all extremely entertained on the section "On this day" of his site jimmypage.com. Every now and again, funny things happen on that site. So who knows, maybe we'll have a third season of the Jimbert show after all.</p><p>In the meantime, we will take apart a few more songs and connect a few more ideas...</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>As you've seen, doing this thing right is going to take a village. </p><p>Also, I dream of having some nerdy fannish discussion going in the comments. Please, I insist.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. To build a dream for me and you</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>"Oh to touch the Dream / hides inside and never seen."</p><p>In which we ask why Robert and Jimmy picked "No Quarter" as a title to their reunion album and try to figure out what the song means (Will we succeed? OH THE SUSPENSE...)</p><p>We'll go digging for references to a certain "Dream" which will take us as far back as What Is And Never Should Be, and all the way to Achilles Last Stand. </p><p>We will discuss ALS, Ultimate Jimbert Song, for Jimmy and Robert themselves, and we'll examine it line by line.</p><p>To do that, we'll have to talk necessarily about Morocco, the place of an epic journey and crucial turnpoint in their lives and their love story, which Robert evokes in Carry Fire. We will ask "why Morocco" and we'll reply "gaaaay."</p><p>And from Morocco, right back to No Quarter, the album, where we'll have a (totally half-assed) (yes what I'm tired) look at Yallah ("The Truth Explodes") and find it is a callback to BOTH No Quarter AND Achilles Last Stand.</p><p>Because of Hiding, we'll touch on Wonderful One, my favourite Jimbert song in the world ever.</p><p>And at the end of it all I'll play you When I Was a Boy and ask you who do you think it's about.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Since time and circumstance seems to be conspiring to make cahooting with Leds about this impossible, I'm putting out a version which is bereft of Leds' insight and much wider, deeper, direct knowledge of queer experience, history and culture, which is a godawful shame. But this IS a work in progress, at all times, so we'll get your light, Leds. I'm just impatient...</p><p>I have NOT spent as much time on Yallah and Wonderful One as I should. There is much to say about both. I referred only to what was relevant to the discussion. I do welcome whatever inspirations, ideas, or insight you can offer, always.</p><p>This is STILL not a thesis, or an essay. It's a collection of thoughts and interpretations of Robert's lyrics which I've attempted to organise in a way that shows where I see the connections, and how I've worked out the meanings, derived precisely from these connections.</p><p>I am going to get working straight (heh) away on a timeline specifically for this, uh, meta, where you can find the events I am referring to.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>When they reunited again in 1994 for the project ‘<b>Unledded’,</b> Jimmy and Robert named their first new album together “No Quarter.” When asked about that choice, Robert said “Nothing in particular, besides the obvious.”(*)  I find nothing obvious about it, but then again sometimes I can be quite thick.</p><p>(* I really need to start gathering and indexing my refs, right?)</p><p>Picking that title caused shock and dismay to many fans, who considered it adding insult to injury to John Paul Jones. ‘No Quarter’ had always been a showcase for JPJ’s abilities with the organ. Word is, JPJ wasn’t even told about the reunion, and learned about the project through the press; the fans were also aghast (great word) that he wasn’t invited to take part in it, although JP and RP made it very clear in interviews that this was not a band reunion but a “new account.” To top it up, JP and RP were very uuuh blasé about it all when asked in interviews (I: “Where’s John Paul Jones? RP: “He’s parking the car.”)</p><p>Depending on where they really stood with Jonesy at the time, and what actually happened backstage, and also depending on JPJ’s sense of humour, they were either very, very insensitive or a pair of massive assholes. Or both. I don’t know. Only they know. But excluding JPJ, not informing him duly and respectfully, and calling the album after His song, is a collection of slights which many fans have not forgiven to this day.</p><p>I still don’t know if Robert means anything specific with “besides the obvious”, whether it means what it says (“take no prisoners”? Or literally “no refuge”?), or if it’s a distraction designed to drive the fans bananas wondering about it, or whether there is something slapping me in the face which I’m not noticing. It’s of course a reference to a LZ song, but why this one? Weeeell I may have a bit of an answer. Wasn’t obvious at all, however. It took one hell of a lot of desk-heading and a couple of lucky illuminations.</p><p><b>No Quarter (The Song Remains The Same, 73)</b> to JP and RP, is a lot more than a LZ song in which JPJ got to show his vast musical skills. Has to be. They picked it out of them all, and all the other titles imaginable. They obviously feel whatever debt they owed to JPJ is paid, and the song belongs to them to do whatever they want with it. So WHY, asked Bookie. These two never do anything at random, rather the opposite. They pack as much as they can into everything they do. They aim to communicate through their music, but the message is complex af, and they don’t want to make it easy anyway. It’s never blatant. It’s for the initiated, for those who make an effort and dig deeper. So WHY pick it? What’s supposed to be so obvious?? What the HELL is that song about in the first place? </p><p>The lyrics of No Quarter are quite cryptic and abstract. For a long time, I had no idea what it was about, not a clue. The song is (most unusually) written in the third person, except for the following line:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “They carry news that must get through </em>
</p><p>
  <em> To build a dream for me and you.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>It’s hard to tell who are the “they” in this song. I’m still not clear about it. Could be themselves as their uuuh warrior personas (spoilers.) </p><p>Considering Robert’s interests in Viking stuff (I am aware how vague and “unacademical” this sounds), it might come from the same place as <b>The</b> <b>Immigrant Song</b> – that is, exploring ideas concerning “that Viking stuff” and using metaphors and phrases inspired by them, but not necessarily expressing deeply intimate, sincere emotions or ideas. It talks about the mysterious “they” as leaving home and undertaking “<em>the path where no-one goes,</em>” a very dangerous journey, risking their lives, facing the snow and the dogs of doom (“<em>howling more.</em>”) And ‘they’ hold ‘<em>no quarter</em>’ – it’s a fight to the death, taking no prisoners, surrendering or accepting rendition is not an option. Victory or nothing. But against who? Who are they fighting? What’s their purpose for leaving home and refuge and brave the lethal dangers out there?</p><p>Vikings and other peoples left their homes to raid, pillage, sometimes to conquer and invade. However, the mission of these “they”, is to <em> “carry news that must get through / to build a dream for me and you. </em>”</p><p>Ah. Interesting. <em> A Dream. </em> Not just any dream: A dream <em> for me and you. </em></p><p>‘Me and you,’ I won’t tire of saying it, in the vast majority of cases, in popular music, is for love songs. So what about this particular case? Is No Quarter a love song?? How???</p><p>Well, then. ‘No Quarter’ is a really, really great case for something I have noticed about most things concerning Led Zeppelin which are unclear or enigmatic, both about the songs and the band: everything becomes clearer and much more straightforward when you factor in the Jimbert.</p><p>Let’s factor in the Jimbert, then.</p><p>‘The dream’ is a recurrent symbol in Robert’s lyrics, <em> specifically </em> in love songs. I am first aware of it in “What is and never should be.”</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “And if you wake up with the sunrise </em>
</p><p>
  <em> And your dreams are still as new...” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>I bumped into this quote in a blog called “The Stairway to Kashmir."</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “’What Is And Never Should Be’ was such an important song for me at that time in my life. It was about a girl who I loved so dearly and have loved since regularly and surreptitiously. It was so cheesy. (Sings) ‘Into a castle I will take you.’ I remember the session, I remember cutting it, I remember thinking about her and I remember the first time that I played it to her.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>(First of all, I had to check “surreptitiously” means what I thought it means: “in a way that attempts to avoid notice or attention; secretively.”)</p><p>I can’t find the source, says it’s from 93. Must take it with caution until we can source it, but it sounds legit enough.  I won’t use it to prove anything much, just going to say that Robert and Jimmy have a habit of mentioning songs (or in this case a line) which turn out to be a lot more significant than they make it seem. </p><p>What stood out to me at first was the castle. Not because it’s cheesy, but because... A castle? And if that quote is legitimate, it stands out even more. </p><p> </p><p>Besides the very tantalising “What is and never should be” and “what’s to be they say will be” and all those really sexy oracular words Robert came up with, at first glance, the lyrics seem relatively generic and straightforward. It’s about an illicit affair. Running away to be with your let’s call it adulterous lover. </p><p>We know it’s illicit because “it shouldn’t be,” and “we shouldn’t go.” The pronouns of the beloved are female. It was written in 69. It could apply to a number of women. Pretty much all of them: Robert had just married his pregnant bride Maureen. </p><p>The beloved  in this song has been routinely identified with Shirley Wilson, Maureen’s <em> sister </em>. Which is a thing that happened. (Yes, I know right? *shrugs* Robert Plant, man…) I mean, if there ever was an affair that “never should be”... (I am convinced Robert and Maureen had a flexible understanding going on, rather than poor Maureen being cheated on and betrayed mercilessly and taking it like a floormat, or that she was oblivious. But still, in the matter of Shirley Wilson, I’ll step outside literary analysis for a moment and just say, yikes.)</p><p>Anyway, WIANSB could very well be about Shirley, who am I to say otherwise. Robert went on to have a child with her in 91 (!!) so that was a long, meaningful story that definitely took its time. </p><p>Besides the illicit part, and perhaps the date when it was written, we really don’t have much to go on. From the lyrics alone, we can’t even be sure that it’s about anyone in particular. Could be just illicit affairs in general, inspired by real life but not meant to be specific. We know nothing about the beloved, we get no details. It might very well be deliberate. If it’s s real, illicit love which for some reason “should never be”, maybe it’s best if the identity of the beloved remains a mystery, right? The quote up there, if legit, would indicate that it is about someone in particular, but let’s always take whatever RP says about his lyrics with a healthy dose of scepticism. </p><p>Things that stick out about that quote:</p><p> </p><p>“<em> was such an important song for me at that time in my life.” </em></p><p> </p><p><em> ”it was about a girl who I loved so dearly and have loved since regularly and surreptitiously.” ( </em>The quote is supposed to be from 1993, the year of Fate of Nations, which features two songs very explicitly addressed to Jimmy, and that they got back together uuuh musically in 94.)</p><p> </p><p>Of course the <em> “I remember the session... </em>” Awwww...</p><p> </p><p>And, definitely, highlighting the castle. This is the complete verse: </p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “And if I say to you tomorrow </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Take my hand, child come with me </em>
</p><p>
  <em> It's to a castle I will take you </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Where what's to be, they say will be.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p> In 1969, or at any time before 76, I would have nothing in the way of details to try to pin down the identity of the beloved. But this is 2020, and we have a helluva lot of context. And more than anything, I have moar SONGS. In retrospect, compared to these songs Robert still had to write, WIANSB becomes indeed a lot more specific.</p><p> </p><p>----&gt; EDIT: (MORNING AFTER PUBLISHING THIS BECAUSE THAT'S WHEN EUREKAS HAPPEN) APROPOS OF HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE CLAIRFYING THINGS:</p><p>SO this quote is 93???</p><p>HE'S BRINGING UP THE CASTLE??</p><p>SO in 93 he was probably touring and/or publicising Fate of Nations, right?</p><p>In FoN we have one of the most openly Jimbert songs ever, <strong>"CALLING TO YOU" -- </strong>This is the song which calls to Jimmy directly (in the fading coda you can hear CLEARLY <strong>"OH JIMMEH!"</strong>) It was a single and it had a video and everything (you have to see it! It's on youtube. Beware of the angel.)</p><p>So that's Jimmy and Jimmy and it's Jimmy and it contains the following line:</p><p>
  <strong>"WHO STOLE THE KEYS TO THE GATES OF THE CASTLE OF LOVE."</strong>
</p><p>So, to those who might have been paying attention (for example, Jimmy Page) Robert would have been drawing attention to WIANSB AND CALLING TO YOU, and while doing that, he'd be fucking connecting the two, and so I am going to go on a fucking limb and say that yes, WIANSB was ALWAYS about Jimmy.</p><p> </p><p>ALSO:  This is something they do, pay attention. In interviews and such, when they mention certain songs as if at random, they are NOT. They're constantly fucking doing this, and doing me poor head in. Pls continue.      <strong>&lt;----</strong></p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Now, please, pay attention to the imagery, at the specific words. Check out these lines...</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “Catch the wind, see us spin </em>
</p><p><em> Sail away </em> <em> leave today </em></p><p><em> Way </em> <em> up high in the sky </em> <em> ” </em></p><p>Now these:</p><p><b> <em>“Oh, to </em> </b> <b> <em>sail away</em> </b></p><p>
  <b> <em>To sandy lands and other days”</em> </b>
</p><p><b> <em>“Oh</em> </b> <b> <em>, to ride the wind</em> </b></p><p><b> <em>To </em> </b> <b> <em>tread the air above</em> </b> <b> <em> the din”</em> </b></p><p> </p><p>These:</p><p>
  <em> “And if you say to me tomorrow </em>
</p><p><em> Oh what </em> <em> fun </em> <em> it all would be </em></p><p>
  <em> Then what's to stop us, pretty baby </em>
</p><p>
  <em> But what is and what should never be.” </em>
</p><p>And these:</p><p><b> <em>“Oh, the </em> </b> <b> <em>fun</em> </b> <b> <em> to have</em> </b></p><p>
  <b> <em>To live the dreams we always had”</em> </b>
</p><p> </p><p>The Italicised lines are from <em> What Is And Never Should Be, </em> 1969. The bolded are from <b>Achilles Last Stand,</b> 1976. They were written far enough apart, but is it just me who sees an interesting consistency? </p><p>It can be argued that it’s all still relatively generic, isn’t it. Robert has a thing for the sea and sailing, in love songs in particular. It comes back again and again.</p><p> </p><p>But what about these:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “Everybody I know seems to know me well </em>
</p><p>
  <em> But they’re never gonna know that I move like hell.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Aaaaaand these:</p><p> </p><p>
  <b> <em>“Slipping off a glancing kiss</em> </b>
</p><p>
  <b> <em>To those who claim they know.”</em> </b>
</p><p> </p><p>These two sets of lines. These lines! Hm... They get me thinking every time. Don’t tell me there is not something interesting going on here, when you put it all together.</p><p>Now, I really don’t fricking know what “I move like hell” means (probably sex XD) or who is “everybody I know [who] seems to know me well” in WIANSB, but I have a better idea what “those who claim they know” means in ALS.</p><p> </p><p><b>Achilles Last Stand,</b> 1976. Robert wrote it from a wheelchair after a car accident in Rhodes, after a long journey with Jimmy, and only Jimmy, to Morocco.</p><p>The journey to Morocco was a pivotal moment for both of them. The place itself seems to have acquired huge sentimental value, and even a mythical quality, these two being the way they are. A symbol, if you will. A symbol of what, though? </p><p>When they reunited in 94, Jimmy and Robert went to Morocco to find their groove. In 2017, Robert wrote the song <b>Carry Fire</b> from the eponymous album with a deliberately marked North African sound.</p><p>I believe that “<b>Carry Me Down To The Sea</b> ” from Fate of Nations (93) (and I believe I hear it too in <b>Calling to You</b>) is also written to evoke that place, and that journey (melody, arrangements, and lyrics), and even more, to evoke WIANSB. – What, Morocco and sailing? I suppose many people hear ‘Morocco’ and the first thing that comes to their mind is the Sahara desert, but actually Morocco has a long coastline, and prominent seaside towns, like Essaouira and Agadir by the Atlantic ocean, which feature in the itinerary of the trip in 75 as provided by Jimmy himself on his site in the On This Day entry from May 25th.</p><p>
  <em> “On this day in 1975, it was the last Earls Court concert for Led Zeppelin for a run of nine. I’m Morocco-bound from here. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I went to Morocco with Robert Plant and stayed at La Mamounia Hotel in Marrakech. We had many an adventure in Ouarzazate, Essaouira, Guelmin and also Agadir. But it was the intoxication of Jemaa el-Fna, the medieval central market square of Marrakech that we would return to some twenty years later in 1995 to perform Yallah (The Truth Explodes)* during the recording of the Unledded Page &amp; Plant project.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>(* We’ll have a look at this extraordinary song in this very chapter, since it turns out it DOES call out to Achilles AND to No Quarter.)</p><p> </p><p>So: Morocco, Big Deal in Jimbert history. An epic journey which both address as a high point in their lives and their relationship. </p><p>And Achilles Last Stand is a song about that trip.</p><p>Now, I am aware that in forums (fora?) and other places there seems to be some arcane discussions about the possible meaning of ALS. I hear heroin trip, I hear general quest for knowledge, I hear World War 2 pilot… Points for people who can bring up more of these.</p><p>If you’ve read chapter 1, maybe you remember that I mentioned being “exposed” to ALS as another critical moment for me in my “but is it fucking real or am I insane?” journey down the Jimbert road. When I heard that song, and learned about the esoteric debates about its meaning, I realised that... fucks sakes, I’m not the one with the problem. It’s <em> them! </em> Because Achilles Last Stand couldn’t be more transparent, especially if you know it was written just after their trip to Morocco. It literally mentions the Atlas, ffs! But don't take it from me: Jimmy put it black on white in the Anthology.</p><p> </p><p><em> “The trip to Morocco is part of the narrative of the song: the ‘mighty arms of Atlas’ is a reference to the Atlas Mountains.” </em> (He goes on to add, remarkably, <em> “I don’t normally talk about Robert’s lyrics, because it’s for him to do that, but I can’t help it because I’m so proud of that song and the passion that Robert and I put into writing it and performing it. </em> ” ( <b>page 248 or something? Nuts I lost the ref.)</b></p><p> </p><p>What Jimmy also says about Achilles:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “After our Earls Court shows, Robert and I travelled through Morocco, then went to Montreux before meeting our families in Rhodes. I needed to go back to London for a few days and then, unfortunately, Robert had his car accident. Fate throws the dice so, instead of going on tour that year, what we actually did was eventually head to Musicland Studios in Munich with the other members of the band and work on Presence. </em>
</p><p><em><span class="u"> At this point we didn’t know whether we would be able to tour again,</span> but what was clear was that Robert needed to recover fully before even thinking about making any further decisions. However, what we agreed is that we would channel this dark and lonely time into making an album and see what would happen. As it turned out, he had the courage and fortitude to come back, but </em> <span class="u"> <em> while we were doing that album we thought it might be our last. </em> </span> <em><span class="u"> I see ‘Achilles Last Stand’ as a narrative, both musically and lyrically, of that time.</span>” </em></p><p>(underlining mine. I think this is a very, very relevant bit of information. Basically, they thought this album could be a last hurrah, which makes me change the way I hear evertything...)</p><p> </p><p>In the 2007 Awards of Classic Rock magazine, Jimmy won the Living Legend accolade. Whatever that is. Robert did not attend, but recorded a tribute for him. The whole thing is of course worth watching. </p><p> </p><p>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng5CzvCvfOE</p><p> </p><p>He mentions their trips (Thailand, India) where they went together, just the two of them, and behold what two songs he chooses to highlight from their Zep days:</p><p> </p><p><em> “I was always amazed I could find lyric and melody to complement the roaring </em> <b> <em>Achilles Last Stand </em> </b> <em> or the caressing bleak beautiful (muse?) that is </em> <b> <em>The Rain Song</em></b><em>. Just examples of the contrasts we experienced.” </em></p><p> </p><p>Of course, this is an epic rock symphony vs. an epic love rock ballad (or whatever the hell that song is, it’s a genre in itself) so it certainly shows the wide reach of their work together. </p><p>But that’s not all. We know now Achilles is a very important song to them, and we haven’t got to The Rain Song yet, but whoa boy, when we do. I will be arguing that these two songs represent not only contrasts in the music they made, but in their experience as lovers (“the contrasts we experienced” is an interesting choice of words innit.)</p><p>They’re the two extremes of that experience: ALS-Morocco is the culmination of their romance, the very best times, the time and imaginary place they’ll forever yearn for and attempt to conjure up, the symbol of all that was Good and Extraordinary about it, and TRS represents the bleak times, when the fire had grown so low, when it even seemed the gloom would never go, when it felt like it was over. (The Rain Song is the origin of the theme of the Seasons of Emotion, which… is all over the fucking place tbh. We’ll go into it more deeply, but what it says is that this love has seasons, like the year, with winters, springtime, and summer, that emotions rise and fall, but since it’s a cycle, as sure as there is a winter, there will be a spring. Basically this love is eternal. Sob.)</p><p> </p><p>So what exactly <em> is </em> ALS about? Why do I claim to see it so clearly, why am I so sure, when other people keep arguing and debating? Weeell I factor in the Jimbert, don’t I? </p><p>I think we all agree that WIANSB is about an illicit affair. In WIANSB the lovers are dreaming of going away so they can be together. Well, in ALS, the dream has come true:</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>“Oh, the fun to have / To live the dreams we always had.”</b>
</p><p><em> (“And if you say to me tomorrow / Oh what </em> <em> fun </em> <em> it all would be...”) </em></p><p> </p><p>And check this out.</p><p> </p><p>“<b>Oh, to touch the dream</b></p><p>
  <b> <em>Hides inside and never seen.”*</em> </b>
</p><p> </p><p>*THE SECRET DREAM. Let’s talk about The Dream some more in a bit, when we try to figure out what the hell is going on in No Quarter.</p><p>In the meantime:</p><p> </p><p><em>“To touch the dream / </em><em>Hides Inside And Never Seen.</em> (ALS, 75)</p><p> </p><p><em>“Our fields were plenty filled with clover / So long ago and </em><em>out of sight”</em> (Dance with you tonight, 2017.)</p><p> </p><p><em> “When you feel the way you feel / </em> <em> You can never, no, never let it show. </em> <em> ” </em> (Wonderful One, 94)</p><p> </p><p><em> “I give my word / </em> <em> My lips are sealed. </em> <em> /Do you ever really wonder how I really feel? / You’re the only one.” </em> (The Only One, 88)</p><p> </p><p>There’s a fricking theme here, or is it just me?</p><p>Like Leds very wisely noted, what straight guy writes so much about having to hide his love?</p><p> </p><p>“Shirley!” some will claim.</p><p>Surely. But<em> Shirley was not in Morocco, now, was she? </em></p><p> </p><p>Okay. So. We know, because they’ve told us themselves, and because it’s clear as fricking day, that ALS is about Jimmy and Robert in Morocco. But what exactly does it say, which makes me go around claiming that it’s in fact <em> a love song </em> about Jimmy and Robert in Morocco?</p><p>Shall we break it down line by line?</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Let's go smurfs: <span class="u">ACHILLES LAST STAND</span>:</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>It was an April morning when they told us we should go</b>
</p><p>To dodge taxes (assholes. The only mitigating factor is that plenty other rock stars did it too. Like, the Beatles even wrote a song about it) they had to leave England for a period of time. It was known as Tax Exile and it wasn’t exactly a secret, then, now, or during the 50 years in between. They left for Morocco soon after the last of 9 colossal, mythical concerts at Earl’s Court, which was on May 25th. Jimmy told us so in an entry of his On This Day (see above).</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>As I turned to you, you smiled at me</b>
</p><p>
  <b>How could we say no?</b>
</p><p>Aw. You and me, people, you and me. If this was a boy and a girl, we’d already be thinking about cupids and hearts. But okay, suspend judgement, they were VERY good friends after all; let’s carry on.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Oh, the fun to have</b>
</p><p>
  <b>To live the dreams we always had</b>
</p><p>See above:</p><p>‘<em>And if you say to me tomorrow / Oh what fun it all would be / Then what’s to stop us, pretty baby / But what is and what should never be” </em></p><p><em> “So if you wake up in the morning / and your dreams are still as true… </em>” – ‘What is and never should be’.</p><p>I mean, wanna make Jimmy swoon? Promise you’ll take him to a castle… Or to a Kasbah, in this case.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Oh, the songs to sing</b>
</p><p>
  <b>When we at last return again</b>
</p><p>…Thats’s… Jimmy… I mean… “We went on a trip. Jimmy and I. And we will return at one point. And we’ll make some beautiful music. Which is what we do. Jimmy and I."</p><p>Like, who the fuck ELSE could that be about??? Who else did Robert sing (make, perform) music with in 1975? Just 2 more people, neither of which was in Morocco at the time.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Slipping off a glancing kiss</b>
</p><p>
  <b>To those who claim they know</b>
</p><p>Okay, so. TO WHOMST did they slip a glancing kiss? To Peter Grant? To the Tax People? No. I mean, maybe to them too, but usually they would slip off a kiss to their wives and kids, right? Later on there will be a reference to being free from the “shackles of commitment”, bear with me.</p><p>*To “Those who claim they know.” Sooo they think they know but they don’t.</p><p>--&gt; Or so Robert thinks/writes. I honestly have no idea how could anybody from the inner circle NOT know, but skjdfdjhfg focus, Bookie, and don’t forget the power of denial either...ANYWAY. I have no idea how things were in real life, whether their wives knew and went with it, whether they actually managed to maintain the secret, or whether they just thought they did, but I know what this line is doing here: added to the “dream that hides inside and [is] never seen”, it's tellin’ us, ATTENTION, here be SECRETS.</p><p>WHAT is the secret, then, to ‘those who claim they know’? That they went to Morocco? That they were bandmates? (omg and they were bandmates!) WHAT DO YOU HIDE FROM YOUR WIFE WHEN YOU GO AWAY WITH YOUR BANDMATE ON HOLIDAY TO A SUNNY PLACE WELL KNOWN AS A FAVOURITE GAY DESTINATION?  –GEE I DON’T KNOW!</p><p>Oh wait, yes I do! I just remembered “What is and never should be”!</p><p>*MOROCCO THE GAY DESTINATION: You can do your own research, but I’ve found this nice introduction for you:</p><p> </p><p>https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29566539</p><p> </p><p>And I don’t know if you’re aware that, prior to this trip, Jimmy Page sat down for a conversation with William Burroughs (there are photos and everything, look it up), one of the most famous (or infamous) of the gay writers who visited Morocco for drugs, boys, and a respite from oppression in their countries.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “To those who claim they know” </em>
</p><p> </p><p><em> “Everybody I know seems to know me well but </em> <em> (does anybody know that I move like hell / they’re never gonna know that I move like hell </em> <b> <em>)” (I’ve found both. Do we have a last word on this, or does he keep changing it? What other versions do you know?)</em> </b></p><p> </p><p>Such a bloody specific choice of words! It’s almost as if Robert is echoing deliberately this other song about dreaming of going away to have an Illicit Affair with a Secret Lover!</p><p>Maybe it’s not deliberate? Maybe so! Maybe these are just the kind of word combinations that come to Robert’s mind...</p><p>... when he’s writing about Having an Illicit Affair with a Secret Lover. However, if the quote about WIANSB above is legit, apparently he based WIANSB on someone specific whom “he’s continued to love “continuously and surreptitiously” (in the present tense in 1993. When he had already had a child with Shirley Wilson, his wife’s sister. So it was not a secret anymore.)</p><p>So, in WIANSB, this Secret Lover could be anyone! He had so many! </p><p>In ALS, it could be any of the many, many people who went along with him to Morocco, whom he sings songs with when they return again and whom he has a “mutual child” with.</p><p>Or it could just be a crazy coincidence, or even a muddle. Maybe Robert used similar words to evoke a pretty baby child girl with whom he was having an illicit affair in 69, maybe even Shirley, and used similar words again in ALS when writing about his platonic bandmate bro and travel companion Jimmy Page because he’s careless like that. Or maybe it’s just me who sees a similarity.</p><p>So: with the Jimbert, that is, entertaining the possibility that Robert and Jimmy were lovers, I can figure out pretty easily what it means “to touch the dream [that] hides inside and never seen”. Excluding the Jimbert, I have no idea. You?</p><p>The one thing I know for sure, is that this very meaningful, very important song about a very important time in both these men’s lives is <em> not </em> sloppily or carelessly written. And they’ve told us it’s about Jimmy and Robert in Morocco. So, you tell me. What is the dream that hides inside and never seen, which they got to touch in Morocco together? </p><p>(Remember "Shining in the light" from the previous chap? No shortage of light in Morocco.)</p><p> </p><p>Anyway, where were we.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Below the streets that steam and hiss</b>
</p><p>
  <b>The devil’s in his hole</b>
</p><p>I read this as “in Morocco, where it’s so hot the streets are sizzling, the devil —pain, bad stuff in general*— remained in his hole / got buried (and we were happy and everything was great)”. (*Don’t forget Robert wrote this song from a wheelchair, unsure whether this was the end of the band, and therefore, very likely, his life with Jimmy.)</p><p> </p><p>I’m also thinking about <em>‘</em><b>Wah Wah’</b> (1994, Page/Plant, No Quarter). Remember that in 94, Jimmy and Robert joined again to *cough* work together in the Page/Plant project, and the first thing they did was go to Morocco?<em><br/>
</em></p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“So give me peace of mind and let me dance </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Bury all the pain of years beneath the sand” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Bury the pain / devil in his hole.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Oh, to sail away</b>
</p><p>(<em>“Catch the wind, see us spin / Sail away leave today / Way up high in the sky” - WIANSB </em>)</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>To sandy lands and other days</b>
</p><p>Sahara desert, more primitive (in the “purer, more authentic” idealised sense of the word) culture and way of life.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Oh, to touch the dream</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Hides inside and never seen, yeah.</b>
</p><p> </p><p>So. We had that the Beloved “Pretty baby” (&lt;333) in ‘What Is And Never Should Be,’ who has "<strong>dreams</strong>" of "<strong>going away, sail away, leave today</strong>," so they can be together. The lover promises “that you will be mine by taking our time,”, but it’s not allowed, they really shouldn’t, because it’s an illicit affair.</p><p>AGAIN, let’s chew it up, shall we: Robert is a married man with kids, with a very varied and abundant sex life with people who were not his wife, which everybody knew about. So where's the secret here?? </p><p>(Oh here we go:) IS IT SHIRLEY?</p><p>We have “the Dream of Going Away to have your freedom to have an Illicit Romantic Affair” in WIANSB, and we have Robert and Jimmy l<em>eaving, going away, sailing away, to live the dream they always had, to touch the dream that hides inside and never seen.</em></p><p>So, we mentioned “those who claim they know”, who get “glancing kisses” from Robert and Jimmy before they leave to Morocco alone to cheat the taxman.</p><p>They may or may not be the same people in “everybody I know seems to know me well / but they never gonna know that I move like hell.” I still have no idea what Robert means by “I move like hell” but I sort of sense a connection here between people who have an idea of Robert or just, <em> things</em>, which Robert claims is the wrong idea: They <em> seem </em> to know him. They <em>claim</em> they know (something.) Robert says they <em>don’t</em>.</p><p>It’s an extra super-duper secret which might even be more tricky than being in love with your wife’s sister (as well. We don’t question that Robert was indeed in love with his wife AND with her sister, whom he dated before marrying Maureen, and got back together with in 91, if you remember.)</p><p>I really have no idea what he could be talking about.</p><p>Unless of course he means the secret love he’s shared with Jimmy Page from 69 to current days.</p><p>Yup, gay love was more “problematic” in those days, in which homosexuality had just been legalised in the UK, and only in the home, and only among men older than 21 years old, than this kind of pseudo-incest.</p><p>As an anecdote (which has a limited value as an argument but I believe it has enough to put here), only yesterday I was watching an episode of Columbo (yes, what) in which this guy bragged that “this girl you set me up with? She came with her sister, hur hur hur”. Columbo was a show not addressed to the whole family necessarily, but neither was it an “adult” show in that sense (no nudity, no profanity, no sex and no on-screen violence…) The “sister” line was intended to give you an idea of what a debauched but enviable life this rich fucker with this huge mansion and pussy-on-tap was leading. It was an episode from 1976. So the writers of Columbo saw no big problem in suggesting that this rich guy with an enviable life had had sex with two sisters at the same time and it's all fantastic, and not even something the children should not hear.</p><p>Now, if you know of any form of mainstream media from those days, or <em>any</em> days, which introduces a male character whose life the audience should envy by showing what a great sex life he has by talking on the phone about getting it last night from two <em>brothers</em>, please let me know. Or just One hot guy, just one. Show me one gay character in a mainstream show for all the family depicted as sexually debauched and yet likeable and with a life the audience should envy, who receives no condemnation and is not shamed in the show for being sexually debauched.</p><p><em>There isn't.</em> There is nothing before <em>or</em> after Channel 4’s “Queer as folk” from early 2000, in which a lucky rich guy’s character is established by showing him getting it from 2 hot guys simultaneously (we never hear if they are related). And it's a <em>celebration:</em> we are supposed to like and envy this guy; he receives no condemnation, there is no shame, and he does not die at the end! He has a <em>triumphant</em> ending, an apotheosis! There is no other example of something like this that I can think of, not even in the US version of that show, in which the counterpart of this character <em>does</em> get regularly scolded for his wild ways and debauched lifestyle because his life is empty and lonely and can't find true love.</p><p>What I’m getting at is, in the seventies, same-sex affairs were more forbidden, and could fuck up your life, career, and reputation, and so must be kept <em>more</em> in secret, than having an affair with <em>your wife’s sister</em>. The one might make lots of people clutch their pearls, but ultimately it reinforces your reputation as a ladies’ man and gives you manly points (Something like ooooh naughty naughty, but what a boss! Rock stars, eh? If only!) The other would do the exact opposite. <em>The exact opposite. </em>You can still be fucking all the girls in the galaxy, but if you're in love with your male bandmate and you're sleeping with him, you're not "a real man". Worse: it will probably be assumed that all those girls <em>and</em> your wife are a strategy to distract and cover up for your shameful secret, what we know as "beards." Because if bisexuality is badly understood and much reviled in present days, in the seventies it was something glam rockers said they were doing but never really showed or lived openly, before eventually getting married to a woman and/or coming out as exclusively gay. As in, it was not a real thing. And certainly not something to brag about.</p><p>“David Bowie!” you might claim. David Bowie impersonated a genderless “bisexual” alien and his identity was built on that thorough, conscientious mess of a character, which he later killed and immediately reincarnated into the very straight White Duke. His sexy interactions with Mike Ronson and his guitar were staged, part of the Ziggy Stardust circus. Other Glam rockers also went in hard with ambiguity and bisexuality, but that was part of their identity as musicians, of the movement or popular trend they were adhering to. They were addressing a certain audience. They wanted to create shock in the mainstream and shake things up, and attract the kids who were into breaking taboos (for real). But they never, ever paraded their real male paramours in public. They let rumours spread and even let photographs emerge (Bowie and Jagger), but they didn't have a boyfriend or a male lover they just lived their lives with as they did with their girlfriends and wives. They came out but did not dare <em>be</em> out. Meanwhile, Elton John claimed to be bisexual for a while, and then both him and his lyricist Bernie Taupin ended up getting married for bearding purposes (which they admitted later on, when they indeed came out as gay.)</p><p>Liberace, the famous pianist, died in the closet, and people were shocked when his sexuality became known. Ever seen Liberace? Have a look. Freddie Mercury's sexuality only passed on to the mainstream when he died of AIDS. I could give you a list as long as any phonebook of people of all walks of life who were not straight and either kept as low a profile as they could, or suffered the consequences. Only those willing to be pariahs, whose living did not depend on the approval of mainstream society, dared to come out. I can tell you of one (1) relatively adjusted famous gay man who went on mainstream TV and talked about his boyfriend just like that: Allen Ginsberg, the beat poet. But even in the entertainment business, where things were supposed to be more relaxed (maybe among some of your colleagues, just as long as you never, never told anyone else), people stayed in the closet if they knew what was good for them. And those who were able to walk on the wild side did it at their peril. In the cultural sphere? Since forever to pretty much these days, go ahead and find me a gay man depicted more or less positively who was allowed to have a boyfriend or a partner on screen in a mainstream movie or show. Then find me one who survives. How many are there left now? Do the gay man and the boyfriend get to walk into the sunset together? -whoops, there goes "Call me by your name". </p><p>Right now I can think of one single example of a gay main character depicted as a human being who gets to have a boyfriend, and keep the boyfriend, and lives to tell the tale: Toddy, Victoria's best friend in Victor &amp; Victoria. -- Oh, wait!! Another!! "Modern Family". Good for you, guys.</p><p>People, tt was TOUGH. So much tougher than you can imagine. It's tough now, it kills people now, it destroys lives now, and in those days, on top of that, everyone thought you <em>deserved</em> it. The nice people thought you were <em>sick</em>. Hell, it was in <em>73</em> when they removed "Homosexuality" as a pathology from the main clinical books. Do you know what this kind of stuff does to people's <em>sanity</em>? This kind of culture, this society queer people had to live in?</p><p>So, if you <em>did</em> it, you certainly did <em>not</em> flaunt it. Glam rockers were brave and shook things up, but they did it in a very defined musical trend which put a wall between them and the rest of the establishment, it "contained" them, and isolated them in that tag, so people could separate them easily from the rest of the musical scene and from themselves. They faced lots of shit for it too, the only people who thought they were cool were the kids. They did SO MUCH for so many people, they opened lots of minds, they gave strength to so many. But they too had to be careful and keep to their path and oppression very much did NOT end with the advent of Glam rock. Moreover, whatever new paths of freedom may have been opening in some places, very very slowly, the AIDS crisis did away with. </p><p>So Jimmy and Robert deserve recognition at least for the balls they had in the seventies <em>and</em> in the nineties (in the nineties, do not fricking forget, the AIDS crisis was in full rage and the opinion of the mainstream had improved from "sick pervert" to "diseased, infectious pervert punished by god." I personally know people who in fucking 2010 died of AIDS because they were afraid to come out to their fucking families. And my country is not backward in that respect at all.) They deserve recognition because what they put out there was real. Because they were two worldwide superstars and household names who were having a goddamn romantic, sexual <em>gay</em> love story, and had been since the 70s, who took a big fucking chance and, without a fuss, true, they stepped out and walked in the light.</p><p>In the seventies, they were certainly protected by their reputation as ladies’ men and the outrageous tales of orgies and teen groupies and sister-in-law lovers and shark-fucking and black magic, and allowed them to do what they did on stage, which concealed and distracted from the truth, and cast a veil of plausible deniability which they live under to this day. But hell, it <em>is</em> out there. All you had to do, then and now, was consider that it was possible, or just pretend one of them was a woman, and fucking <em>look</em>.</p><p>Of course, they could not possibly predict a future in which their every interview, written and televised, their entire catalogue, so many of their concerts, and so many photoshoots, etc etc etc, would be so readily available in bulk, as I found them, so they could put out little snippets here and there and perhaps feel reasonably safe. (They were NOT safe though. Never lose sight of the cultural context and the society they lived in, don't do them this injustice.)</p><p>But Robert <em>was</em> aware of the vast resource the internet is in 2017 when he wrote 'Carry Fire', the album, and he was very aware of what rainbows symbolise in 2014 when he wrote 'Lullaby and the Ceaseless Roar', and so was everyone else.</p><p>While we're at it, Glam rock was all the rage in the early seventies, and people <em>were</em> aware that bisexuality was a thing, even if they did not understand for the most part, when the band authorised an interview with Lisa Robinson* to appear in Rolling Stone with Robert making an extended joke with the word "bi-lingual" (sic. That's not how you spell it), and surrounding the joke with strong hints and suggestions, reproducing an entire letter from a male fan inviting Robert to his hotel room to spend a night with him and his girlfriend, describe Robert and Jimmy "tossing" playfully on the floor like a pair of... kids, and grabbing knees under the table in a restaurant, at the same time as they fucked each other brainless on stage every night. So basically Robert has been coming out and out and out since 1969, if you can say in fairness that he's ever truly been in. So respect to you, sir. (Not you, other sir. 2014 misconstrued relationship bollocks. Tsk tsk. Not forgotten.)</p><p>(Leds, help. Did I screw up a lot?)</p><p>(*fuck it. I'm doing that next, give you The Interview. Chapter 6. Only the choice bits for legal issues, but will try to link to source.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><strong>SO</strong>, the dream they’d always had but had to keep inside and never allow it to be seen.</p><p><em>They</em>: Jimmy and Robert. The thing you must never let show. "I give my word, my lips are sealed /do you ever really wonder what I really feel? / You’re the only one.”</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Into the sun, the south, the north</b>
</p><p>
  <b>At last the birds have flown</b>
</p><p>
  <b>The shackles of commitment fell</b>
</p><p>
  <b>In pieces on the ground</b>
</p><p>Uuuuh so, 2 married men with kids who are part-time rock gods and get women on tap take a trip alone together to Morocco <em> without </em> their wives and kids, or any women. They refer to themselves as “birds” who have “flown.” As well as swallows migrating south, birds also fly from cages. The imagery of cages-chains-lack of freedom is compounded by the literal “shackles of commitment” mentioned here.</p><p>Could it mean their many professional commitments, extremely demanding work schedule, etc? Sure. I’m sure that’s partially what it means. And you could define the dream as literally “I’m dreaming of a holiday with my friend/bandmate/Soulmate” but then you have to explain to me why that would have to be hidden inside and never seen.</p><p>Moving on.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Oh, to ride the wind</b>
</p><p>
  <b>To tread the air above the din</b>
</p><p>Freedom! Escape! CLIMBING! (Airplanes, mountains.) Peace, quiet.</p><p>They lived in a flying circus, with courtiers and roadies and groupies and whatnot all around all the time; the “carnival”, as Robert calls it in Dance with you tonight; the music biz in general. These boys needed to BREATHE, to get some quiet so they could hear themselves.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Oh, to laugh aloud</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Dancing as we fought the crowds, yeah</b>
</p><p>In Marrakech (and in the four or five Moroccan and Tunisian cities I have been to myself) the streets are packed. They’re narrow and crowded and it’s really hard to walk through. I mean, arcane or what.</p><p>Also, what an epic friendship. Laughing, dancing. Aw.</p><p> </p><p><em> “And if there’s one more time I can dance with you, let me dance with you tonight… Come on and dance another mile </em>…” (DWYT, Carry Fire, 2017)</p><p><em> “Shall we dance and never stop, / take my hand and stop the clock / from turning over…” </em>(Wonderful One, No Quarter, 94)</p><p><em>“From this shore my memory wandered /And I danced upon the sea / Can I dance with you upon the sea?”</em> (Shining in the light, Walking to Clarskdale, 98)</p><p>
  
</p><p>And more. Lots of dancing in Robert’s songs about an old, old love in Carry Fire and No Quarter and Walking to Clarksdale. Lots of sea and sailing too. As in…?  — oh come on keep up. WIANSB!</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>To seek the man whose pointing hand</b>
</p><p>
  <b>The giant step unfolds</b>
</p><p>
  <b>With guidance from the curving path</b>
</p><p>
  <b>That churns up into stone</b>
</p><p>So I don’t know if this is a person, a guide, or the actual shapes of the terrain evoking a hand that points to the Atlas, but anyway: The curving path guides you around the mountain ever upwards. As it goes, earth and dust turn into rocky terrain – churn up into stone.</p><p>And SeEkinG, in general, the Search, the Quest, the Life Journey. It’s a big adventure! It’s epic! It’s a very Them theme. More on that below.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>If one bell should ring</b>
</p><p>
  <b>In celebration for a king</b>
</p><p>
  <b>So fast the heart should beat</b>
</p><p>
  <b>As proud the head with heavy feet, yeah</b>
</p><p> </p><p>Okay this is, uh.</p><p>The proud head with heavy feet is the Atlas. The rest is… messy? I really struggle to establish the “So/as” comparison between a heart beating fast as a head with heavy feet is proud, so if you can unpack this please go ahead. I get that the heart beats fast because of the excitement, like a bell ringing in celebration for a king.</p><p>As a classicist I bump against the wall of identifying the king with the Atlas, who was a titan, but I suppose a king relates to proud heads (not so much heavy feet?) </p><p>Mostly what I get from this is that this is EXCITING. ADVENTURES! And if there are coded declarations of gay love for Jimmy they escape me.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Days went by when you and I</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Bathed in eternal summer’s glow</b>
</p><p>“You and I” is for love songs, people. But don’t take my word for it.</p><p>“Bathed in eternal summer’s glow” : ...In Morocco. Where is hot and sunny all year round (it isn’t, but for a pair of Brits, close enough.) But basically it was a long trip, it was sunny, it was hot, it was a place like an eternal summer.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <b>As far away and distant</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Our mutual child did grow</b>
</p><p>You know when in DWYT I record-screeched at the crown? Well, this time it was more a “COME THE FUCK ON! ARE YOU FRICKING KIDDING ME?” How can people hear that and not… lift an eyebrow, at the very least??</p><p>*pinches skin between eyebrows* Okay. So. Imagine for a moment this is not a song about tripping on LSD or whatever. Imagine this a song about Jimmy and Robert being lovers. When two rock gods love each other very very much…</p><p>Their mutual child is THE BAND, okay? It’s the band. Which they’ve left behind for a while, to its own devices. These two Epic Bros go ahead and call the band their child. OUR MUTUAL CHILD. OF YOU AND I. WHICH ARE JIMMY AND ROBERT, WHO WERE THE ONES ON THE TRIP TO MOROCCO.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Oh the sweet refrain</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Soothes the soul and calms the pain</b>
</p><p>Some people say this is about drugs. Might be, idk.</p><p>But a refrain is a musical device that returns, these two are very musical, their love returns again and again... Idk. What do you got?</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Oh Albion remains</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Sleeping now to rise again</b>
</p><p>Robert’s stuff. Avalon and King Arthur and such.</p><p>If this is the way Robert has of saying that their Rock and Roll Kingdom has sort of fallen asleep while they are away and it will wake up when they return, and the whole Carnival will get on the move again, or if Albion means their families in England, or the Tax Men...? No idea, but either way, it would be quite an awesome, very epic way to describe it. It might just be a nice image to round up this lovely epic song.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Wandering and wandering</b>
</p><p>
  <b>What place to rest the search?</b>
</p><p>This is very Roberty. I’ve written (in fic) that some people have a home, and Robert Plant has a journey. Same for their love: they didn’t have a home to come back to, they were together when they were touring or on a trip. Wandering was freedom to love and seek a more epic life, far removed from the ordinary and the small and the routine. <em> “I live for my dreams and a pocketful of gold” </em> (Over the hills and far away, The Song Remains the Same, 73) <em> “I’m seeking love and glory /Just like I always do” </em> (The May Queen, Carry Fire, 2017) etc.</p><p>The idea of a Quest, of a transcendent Search for idk Truth or Authenticity or just Enhanced Life and Thrill and Knowledge, that’s also in Kashmir (Physical Graffiti, 75. They knew what they were looking for, huh?)</p><p>The Quest, for Jimmy Page, I believe, was the band. It was Led Zeppelin. He found it, he completed that quest. He wanted to stay there. He never wanted it to end.</p><p>For Robert, I believe, the Quest is himself. His own life. New music, new people, adventure, heightened state of living. He’s still on it. It never ends. It’s an interesting contrast, very cool to explore in fic. Painful too. </p><p> </p><p>
  <b>The mighty arms of Atlas</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Hold the heavens from the earth</b>
</p><p>
  <b>For the mighty arms of Atlas</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Hold the heavens from the earth</b>
</p><p>
  <b>From the earth</b>
</p><p> </p><p>The AtLaS. A titan in ancient Greek myth who carried the weight of the skies on his back. What could Atlas be possibly doing in this song about heroin and World War 2 pilots and what else was there??</p><p>Gee, I don’t know, if only we had some real life information to try and figure out what could have inspired this song. Like, you know, like the fact that Jimmy and Robert had been on a journey to Morocco before Robert had a car accident and had to rest for months, during which they wrote <em> Presence </em>, featuring this song, which sounds like a song about some “we” on a journey to a sunny, hot place... Like, could it be a song about Morocco? The trip to Morocco? – I don’t know, dude. It can’t be, because it would be kind of gay. The mutual child and shit. And fellas is it gay to have hidden dreams of traveling with your bandmate to sunny hot places laughing and dancing? I mean, it’s impossible that it’s about the trip to Morocco, because Jimmy Page and Robert Plant are Incredible Awesome Bros and Most Definitely have NEVER touched dicks. So it has to be LSD / Jimmy’s addiction to heroin / A World War II pilot... ANYTHING but THAT. </p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <b>I know the way, know the way, know the way, know the way</b>
</p><p>
  <b>I know the way, know the way, know the way, know the way</b>
</p><p>(this kind of breaks my heart for a hundred different reasons.)</p><p> </p><p>So that was Achilles Last Stand Line By Line, adapted from the ongoing series (as and when I feel like it) “Led Zeppelin For Dummies.”</p><p> </p><p>Worth mentioning too is the choice of title. I read (Wikipedia entry quoting Popoff) (that’s a real name) that the working title was “The Wheelchair Song,” and there is a very famous anecdote, which I believe Robert has told a few times (do a search) that while they were recording it, Robert got so carried away he leaned badly on his bad ankle and fell. Jimmy dashed from the recording booth to “save him.” <em> “I’ve never seen Jimmy move so fast! He was like an Olympian athlete!” </em>It’s told as a romantic gesture in ordinary Zep lore. As a joke.</p><p> </p><p>So at one point The Wheelchair Song became “Achilles Last Stand.”</p><p>I don’t know you, but reading what Jimmy said, that they wrote it believing it might be their last album, the smile kind of freezes in my face. And it seems to me a very, very open, straight(heh)forward song about the two of them, and their romantic relationship (even if you want to cling on to the Platonic! Platonic! I would still claim their friendship is very, very romantic.) And I’m going to go ahead and say that maybe they thought it was indeed a swan song, the last chance to Tell Their Truth, in their own way, to which they seemed pretty committed (they still are.) (Yes, Jimmy too. Check out LZ by LZ)</p><p> </p><p>While we’re at it, Achilles was that greatest of all Greek heroes, whose destiny it was to die in the taking of Troy. He was almost invulnerable, but he died from a very stupid wound (a treacherous arrow to the one place he could be hurt; in Achilles’ case, the heel.)</p><p>Previous to that, he temporarily lost his mind when his dudebro Patroclus was killed. He was Alexander the Great’s idol. Alexander the Great, you know, Hephaistion’s bandmate.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>*</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em> “And if you wake up with the sunrise </em>
</p><p><em> And your </em> <em> dreams </em> <em> are still as new...” </em></p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em> “Oh, to touch the dream </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Hides inside and never seen.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Oh, the fun to have </em>
</p><p>
  <em> To live the dreams we always had” </em>
</p><p> </p><p> <em>“They carry news that must get through </em></p><p>
  <em> To build a dream for me and you.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>We’re back to ‘No Quarter,’ released 3 years before Presence (Achilles), before the trip to Morocco. A song which Jimmy and Robert chose to name their reunion album after, and performed in their tour. And when asked why, Robert just said “nothing besides the obvious.”</p><p>An enigmatic song written in the third person except for those lines. Which include “Me and You”, and a Dream.</p><p>What do you think this dream could be? Is it the same dream as in ‘Achilles Last Stand’? Is it the same dream as in ‘What Is And Never Should Be’?</p><p>The mission of the “they” in the song is to “carry news.” The purpose of carrying these news is “to build a dream for me and you.”</p><p>Carrying news: reporting. Conveying a message. Make It Known to people.</p><p>The Dream in WIANSB was to go away somewhere the lover and the beloved can be together. In ALS they "touch" the dream - from that I derive that it doesn’t quite come true. Or it doesn’t stay true. This is a holiday, a journey. The lovers will have to return to their lives, where being together is harder. And more than anything, where they will have to hide again.</p><p>So what is the Dream in No Quarter?</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="u"> <strong>NO QUARTER LINE BY LINE, WHO'S WITH ME</strong> </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Close the door, put out the light</b>
</p><p><b>You know</b> <b> they won't be home tonight</b></p><p>    A new journey, with no return, into the night.</p><p>    They're leaving home (home, refuge, family.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>The snow falls hard and don't you know?</b>
</p><p>
  <b>The winds of Thor are blowing cold.</b>
</p><p>It’s a tough, hostile world out there.</p><p> </p><p>EDIT: I just thought... I had not even mentioned the Viking stuff because it's such a given, but actually I think it's worth looking into: "Winds of Thor" tells us we're in Norse mythology territory here, that we should think about those warriors as pseudo-Vikings.</p><p>Did you know that Vikings had an established, acknowledged institution which today we would refer to as same-sex marriage? Do you think Robert and Jimmy would be aware of it? Would it help reconcile the self-image of these children of the 50s with their queer identity, associating it with those brave, manly Viking warriors who plundered and sacked and had husbands they could legally share their estate with, and bequeath to in death? Hm.</p><p>Same for the attraction to Morocco and Arabic culture, largely homosocial, with genders segregated, and a whole trend in its classical literature from Medieval times about gay love... Idk guys, people are drawn to stuff for reasons...</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>They're wearing steel that's bright and true</b>
</p><p>Warriors geared up for battle. ‘Bright and true’ -- they’re the heroes in this quest, not villains.</p><p>     This is relevant because we get "soldier of love" and the castle imagery and stuff elsewhere in Robert's work, and I have found, after much breaking my head in, that No Quarter shed light on that. Lovers as Warriors (uuuh remember that Achilles guy? And Alexander?) and love as a strife, something you fight for.  I WONDER WHAT KIND OF LOVE IS THAT.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>They carry news that must get through, oh</b>
</p><p>Their mission is not to raid and pillage. They’re not out to conquer and plunder. They carry news. They’re going to let people know something.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>They choose the path where no-one goes</b>
</p><p>(Shudder) What’s this path? Where does it lead to? (Robert pls you were surrounded by people who were going down that path with a lot more uuuh visibility than you -- but I know you like your romantic notions, and it makes for great songs, so never mind, go ahead.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>They hold no quarter.</b>
</p><p>    They will not stop until it’s done.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Walking side-by-side with death</b>
</p><p>
  <b>The devil mocks their every step.<br/>
</b>
</p><p>
  <b>The snow drives back the foot that's slow</b>
</p><p>
  <b>The dogs of doom are howling more</b>
</p><p>     This is very fricking dangerous. It’s cold and it’s tough and it’s slow going, and damnation and the devil haunts them.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>They carry news that must get through</b>
</p><p>
  <b>To build a dream for me and you</b>
</p><p>
  <b>They choose the path where no one goes</b>
</p><p> </p><p>In 73, I would not know what that might mean.</p><p>In 94, choosing this song and putting it on center stage, I believe, means that they’re coming out. They’re going to tell the world.</p><p>The path where no-one goes: be a pair of huge rock stars who are a gay couple in the daylight. Husbands. Just to <em> be</em>. No excuses, no explanations, no apologies, no artifice. No more "hides inside and never seen."</p><p>That’s the dream. That was always the dream. What heterosexual couples take for granted and queer people have had to fight and struggle and suffer so much for (and they still are.) Something no other men of such high profile have done, in 73, in 94, and<em> to this fucking day</em>. Some celebrities have come out and married their partners, who were not celebrities. Musician Janelle Monae dated actress Tessa Thompson and is now (or was) reportedly dating Lupita Nyong'o. But that was<em> last year. </em></p><p>Jimmy and Robert are mastodonts of popular culture. In 1994, they choose this song, No Quarter, about "carrying news to build a dream for me and you", to name their reunion album. And if you take off the heteronormative goggles for a moment and examine what they did, what they said, and the songs they wrote between 94 and 2000, I don't know you, but I see a happily, if unorthodox, old married couple.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>They hold no quarter</b>
</p><p>
  <b>They ask no quarter</b>
</p><p>
  <b>They hold no quarter</b>
</p><p>
  <b>They ask no quarter</b>
</p><p>    They will show no mercy and they won’t ask for mercy. If it fucking destroys them. </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>People will argue, very well argued, that Stonewall was in 69, that people were actually coming out and being militant and causing change and fighting for what we have today, and suffering in a very real way, physical and financial and social status wise, etc, people much more vulnerable than them, and that Jimmy and Robert excluded themselves from that movement. They didn't help, they didn't contribute. To this day, they are universally perceived as Totally Straight. They may have invited people in, but not many got the invitation. Even queer people mostly missed it.</p><p>You could argue that they played it safe. That they didn't really risk anything. That they like to write songs about being lover warriors and going the path were no-one goes and blah blah, but actually they steered clear off real exposure, and for all their toeing the line, they threw in distractions and made sure to mention their girlfriends and in the end they "got away" with it.</p><p>And that's all true.</p><p>And that's even more true in 94. They became more brazen and more explicit, if you <em>look</em>, but never explicit enough, never open enough. There were always distractions. And hell, by then they might have suspected they could get open as fuck, and the world would probably miss it again, and the establishment would continue to politely avoid the subject. They were bold, but did not take the last step, and nobody got the message. So we can argue that "it doesn't count."</p><p>Have they made a difference? Nah. They haven't made any difference to the queer movement. At all. And that's a bloody shame. Because they could do. Today. Now. They could shake up the music industry and the ripples would be felt worldwide. They could change things for people in a very real way.</p><p>There is a debate to be had about whether public figures owe anything to the public and the world, whether they are under any obligation, or whether they have at least some responsibility, to use their celebrity and their power to effect positive change, if they can, or whether they don't owe anyone anything. Whether there is a zero-value to a public figure remaining closeted, or whether it actually sends a message anyway, and so they should bear that in mind when they make their choices. If things stay as they are, believe you me, in a few years all will be revealed anyway, what they were to each other will become mainstream, but those who chose to do so will be able to go on ignoring it and denying it, and those who don't will be able to say that they were afraid or, even worse, ashamed.</p><p>I think there's merit to both sides of the argument tbh, but personally I believe it is not sterile or of no consequence when a public figure choses to hide their sexual identity from the mainstream. In this day and age, it will make a difference if they choose to take it to their graves, whether we like it or not. Then again, far be it from me to tell Jimmy and Robert they are in the wrong or to qualify and judge the way they've decided to live their lives. I have no idea what it is to live as a cultural icon, a rock god, or a queer man raised in the fifties. I am not seventy-something years old, aware that to this day my private life makes headlines and there's rumour and gossip and people still chase me down the streets to get a photo of me and my latest girlfriend, or when I go to the fucking footie on a Sunday to support my team.</p><p>I do have an idea, however, of the kind of enormous mess they would get themselves into if they did explicitly come out. And I do understand that at seventy-something, you may want to spend these years doing what you do, and cementing your legacy as what you have accomplished, rather than being hounded by what you are and who you love. - <strike>Although Jimmy still capitalises on whom he loves, because it's a pretty young thing and it only enhances his Jimmy Pageness. Sorry but that's the truth.<br/>
</strike></p><p>Sexual politics aside, it's a damn bloody shame that the world in general might never know about one of the greatest love stories of all fucking times. Which was gay. No, I'm not exaggerating. Hell, Alexander died at 30. Look at them, look at Robert, still pining like that fifty years on, telling us all about it in beautiful songs. Fucks sakes, what a beautiful thing this is, and how many extraordinarily beautiful babies it has birthed...</p><p>What I have to say for them is that they did experience the same oppression, the same fear, and never mind the conflicting feelings a man born and growing up in the 50s would have about being queer. I don't need them to tell me that. They were privileged because their money and fame (and their mother-hen manager) protected them. The establishment protected their secret. Their bisexuality played in their favour. In those days of ignorance, fucking a lot of women did disperse suspicions that you may be fucking men. So they were white and rich and Brittons and rock stars and where was the danger. Even if the secret was out and their careers were over, didn't they have all the money in the world to carry on?</p><p>Well, even if financial security was the only object, even if they'd been willing to end their career right there and possibly have everything they'd already done banished from the radio and burnt in bonfires until a dream future with more open ways, <em>they could not have walked down the London or Los Angeles streets holding hands without being insulted, harrassed, or even physically attacked.</em> There were vast parts of the queer experience they were protected from, but ultimately, that was always there: you are not free to express affection for your partner in public in goddamn peace.</p><p>And yes, there's also everything else, which also factors in your mental health and happiness, if nothing else: Reputation and career. The regard of their peers. Their peace of mind. Their sense of security and control over their lives. The right to live in the world and be considered according to what you do, rather than have it all distorted and branded by what the world thinks about who you are. They suffered the same homophobia that almost killed Elton John 3 times, and did destroy many others. They did not have the freedom to live as they wanted to. That is oppression. Of the most intimate kind. Just because others had it worse doesn't mean their own experience doesn't count, and they don't have a right to sing about it, and claim that they were brave, because they were.</p><p>So I won't be the one telling them they have no place making songs about fighting oppression, about being brave and living boldly and courageously facing untold perils while never taking the ultimate step of putting on the badge and doing an official press release. I won't tell them that this part of their identity doesn't count simply because the world didn't register it.</p><p>In 94, they appeared (and spoke) in interviews and photoshoots like a happily married couple. They toured around the world together again. Robert romanced the hell out of Jimmy on stage once more. And they wrote a few remarkable new songs, love songs with male pronouns. Love songs with the Lover as God. Songs celebrating getting back his old love and “shining in the light”. They wrote ‘Wah Wah’, with a chorus which repeats 700 times ‘habibi’, the Arabic word for the male form of ‘beloved’. They wrote 'Wonderful One'.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Wonderful One</b>
</p><p>
  <b>(...)</b>
</p><p>
  <b>… “Shall we dance and never stop?</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Take my hand and stop the clock</b>
</p><p>
  <b>From turning over</b>
</p><p>
  <b>And spirit weave, spirit bend</b>
</p><p>
  <b>In the move that has no end</b>
</p><p>
  <b>That we must follow.</b>
</p><p> </p><p>DANCING</p><p>TIME ENEMY OF LOVERS</p><p>TURNING TURNING / MOVE THAT HAS NO END (CYCLE, YEAR, SEASONS OF EMOTION)</p><p>WE MUST FOLLOW: UNSTOPPABLE CYCLE BEYOND YOUR CONTROL</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Oh, that is why</b>
</p><p>    MYSTERIOUS ORACULAR ROBERTING</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Show me your eyes, oh, light of the son</b>
</p><p>TALK TO ME ONLY WITH YOUR EYES (show you your love - say you love me - love me* -- that's from The Rain Song, next chap)</p><p>LIGHT (of the son. Jimmy as pseudo-deity, God, angel, whatever. Light: all that stuff we've mentioned and will mention again, plus Thelema, Jimmy's religion.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Touch me with fire, my mind is undone</b>
</p><p>(hng) WHEN YOU TOUCH ME I CAN'T FUCKING THINK</p><p>
  <b>All life conspire, my freedom has come</b>
</p><p>TO DO THIS THING AND BE TOGETHER IN THE SUNLIGHT</p><p>
  <b>I drift through desire, my wonderful one</b>
</p><p>    *FANS SELF*</p><p>DESIRE AS IN DESIRE.</p><p>HNGGGGG</p><p>WONDERFUL <strong>ONE - THE PRONOUN GAME. NOT GIRL, NOT BABY, NOT LOVE. </strong></p><p> </p><p>What oppression could they possibly experience, these rich, white, ultra-privileged, favourites of Fortune from a rich, first-world country, from a middle-class background, who have what in Catalonia we call "una flor al cul"? (To have a flower in your arse: you're lucky, everything works out for you, everything goes your way.)</p><p>So what do they know about lack of freedom? What do they know about oppression? What kind of oppression have they ever known??</p><p>Want to hazard a guess?</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>When you do what you do</b>
</p><p>
  <b>I can never, never, never</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Let you go</b>
</p><p> </p><p>I WONDER WHAT THAT IS</p><p>(music, you muppets. He was then, always has been, and remains to this day, Jimmy Page's biggest fan. Robert's drug of choice is music, and he happened to come across this actual Wizard who saw him, and chose HIM, who apprenticed him, and thrilled him, and he's still a sucker for that. "When you do what you do.")</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>When you feel the way you feel</b>
</p><p>
  <b>You can never, no, never</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Let it show.”</b>
</p><p> </p><p>WHAT FEELING WOULD THAT BE?? WHAT WERE WE SAYING ABOUT FREEDOM AND OPPRESSION?</p><p>    (I swear to you, if I hear one single 'Shirley'... Among other things, they'd had a son in... uh, 91? So that was that for secrecy on that matter.) (yes what his kids are cousins, problem? Mr. and Mrs. Plant's fault. Should have called him Zeus.)</p><p>WHY PUT IT IN THE FUCKING SONG IF YOU REALLY WANT TO HIDE IT??</p><p>WHY HAVE THEY BEEN ADVERTISING THAT THERE IS A SECRET LOVE THERE THEY CAN NEVER TALK ABOUT OR SHOW FOR SOME MYSTERIOUS REASON?!?!</p><p>
  <strong>"SECRETS HERE! I HAVE A SECRET!! LOOK AT MY SECRET SECRET WHICH IS IN SO MANY OF MY LOVE SONGS! OOOOH SECRETS!"</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>ANd they wrote <strong>Yallah</strong>, initially called, and sometimes still known as, “<strong>The Truth Explodes”</strong>. I DON'T FUCKING MAKE THIS UP.</p><p>It sounds to me kind of a re-write of No Quarter, or a continuation, or a reply, and it confirms what I believe No Quarter is saying.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Rendest rachib, rhud rhip zelp</b>
</p><p>
  <b>borachs un fun dehl noach, shochen zoap* </b>
</p><p>(What transcribed language is that and who can translate it for us. I won't even dare call it Moroccan Arabic because what do I know.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>And your city will fall</b>
</p><p>
  <b>And your corn won't grow</b>
</p><p>
  <b>To the silence from the temple</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Hear the truth explode</b>
</p><p>
  <b>It is written in the dust</b>
</p><p>
  <b>It is whispered in the wind</b>
</p><p>    The TRUTH, the WORD, the MESSAGe, the NEWS THAT MUST GET THROUGH</p><p>   (ALSO : the prophetic tone. So this is very fucking meta but, have you seen the video of 'Calling to you', from Fate of Nations? It also has a kind of oracular/prophetic tone, but more than anything, wait for the superimposed lines floating across the screen. The first 2 pairs at least are quotes from The Prophesy of Britain... Ugh. More on that when we do 'Calling to you.' Because WOW.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>From the wisdom of the fathers</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Where the word begins</b>
</p><p>     YOU TELL ME I DONT GOT TIME</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>In the kingdom of gold</b>
</p><p>
  <b>And the stolen chance* </b>
</p><p>    (In Wah Wah: “From my island home I feel a chance” -- I think this means “My British lover boy is calling me.” Sooo Kingdom of Gold and Stolen Chances. Everything King-y and gold-y in Robert tends to circle around the music industry. )</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>You can join the celebration</b>
</p><p>
  <b>See the children dance</b>
</p><p>
  <b>And the bells will ring</b>
</p><p>
  <b>And the crowds will roar</b>
</p><p> </p><p>ACHILLES LAST STAND FFS</p><p>    Joy, lots of rejoicing everywhere because the truth is out there.</p><p>    Literally out there. In the public square, telling the sky and the sun and the people. </p><p>(...But not too clear because hey, this is a cult for the initiated. - You are initiated now.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>And the sand in the glass</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Can pour no more</b>
</p><p>    The end of time or time has stopped? Time, enemy of lovers?</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>The rivers will freeze</b>
</p><p>
  <b>And the hosts descend</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Thru the fires and the storms</b>
</p><p>
  <b>To the bitter end</b>
</p><p>    That’s No Quarter through and through. And it’s meaningful that it’s there. I have no idea if it’s meant to mean a lot, beyond grabbing your face and burying your nose in No Quarter, the idea that there are news, the TRUTH actually, that must get out there, against all enemies and perils, TO THE BITTER END - WHICH MEANS NO QUARTER.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>And the treasures and the gifts</b>
</p><p>
  <b>And the words and truths</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Will be cast to the heavens</b>
</p><p>
  <b>With Umrah fruit</b>
</p><p>     Treasures and gifts: are these the songs and the talents and Jimmy’s magic guitar playing? -- Everything will be thrown to the skies, like they were doing in that square in Morocco. </p><p>    Umrah fruit: dates. </p><p>“Umrah” -- It appears in “Wah Wah”, another original song written for that album, “Umrah heals, his wings I’ll gladly wear.” “Umrah” is a pilgrimage to Mecca which can be done at any time of the year, as opposed to Hajj which has a specific time. But, the pilgrimage as a “he”? Wot?</p><p>ALSO: Are we talking not as the literal pilgrimage to Mecca, but as a symbol of a holy pilgrimage, a journey that teaches and heals? Their long long journey, is that what heals?</p><p>Anyway, much culture, so reference, just a liiiiittle bit of cultural appropriation, but in those days they called it “fusion” and it was a good thing, because it showed wanting to embrace foreign “exotic” stuff as opposed to being xenophobic. I was there, Gandalf.</p><p>WAH WAH SONG: </p><p>
  <b> <em>From my island home I feel a chance</em> </b>
</p><p>Island home: Britain</p><p>    The chance is Jimmy calling. A new account. A new chance for them. </p><p>
  <b> <em>Kiss the tired ghost</em> </b>
</p><p>
  <b> <em>Of time and circumstance</em> </b>
</p><p>    What happened, happened, let bygones be bygones, kiss and goodbye.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b> <em>So give me peace of mind and let me dance</em> </b>
</p><p>
  <b> <em>And bury all my pain of years beneath the sand</em> </b>
</p><p>    Ooooh baby. Forget your tired, troubled thoughts, just dance, dance, dance.</p><p>    Sand: think deserts, listeners. In the desert where I was so happy with the chance from Island Home once, bury all the pain of YEARS there. It’s been YEARS. </p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Umrah heals, his wings I'd gladly wear</b>
</p><p>    Uh. Sooo how about this: Umrah as a journey, a holy pilgrimage, personified. Because journeys move and transport, it has wings, and Robert will wear them gladly and go wherever.</p><p>
  <b>Laughing to the face</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Of anger and despair</b>
</p><p>    (Aw, darling. It was a long, rough time, wasn’t it? I’m glad for you. Go be happy together for a few beautiful years…)</p><p>By the way, he 'buries' his pain and he 'laughs' in the face of anger and despair, but he doesn’t really address them or resolve them. Not sure if that’s a Freudian slip or an incredible show of self-awareness. </p><p> </p><p>SO.</p><p> </p><p>They did not step on a box to spell it out. They just stepped outside and lived it. -- Granted, protected with distraction techniques, and cloaking spells, still hiding and obscuring in codes, having public girlfriends, talking about ladies every chance they got.</p><p>But if you just fucking <em> look</em>, if you just <em> listen</em>, it was right fucking there. They <em> showed </em> people, and they <em> told. </em>They <em>were</em>.<em><br/>
</em></p><p>As far as I know, The Dream has not appeared in Robert’s songs again. </p><p>Maybe because it came true. Maybe that’s why.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>The last time I am aware of Robert singing about Dreaming is in <b>Walking to Clarskdale</b>, from 98, the second and last album of the Page/Plant project, in a song called <b>“When I Was A Child.” </b>Again, it’s a slightly different dream, and raises a hundred new questions. </p><p> </p><p>Please watch this:</p><p>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5thZSDz2iQ</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “I was reaching for the future </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Slowly floating in the blue </em>
</p><p>
  <em> When I was a boy </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I dreamed a dream of you. </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p><em>I </em><em>danced</em> <em>upon the treetops</em></p><p>
  <em> I drifted with the stream </em>
</p><p>
  <em> When I was a child </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I held you in my dreams </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p><em> Once I was a </em> <em> soldier </em></p><p><em> In my </em> <em> castle </em> <em> strong </em></p><p>
  <em> Oh I stood so tall then </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I could do no wrong </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Innocence and slumber </em>
</p><p>
  <em> When I was a boy </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em> I was walking with a stranger </em>
</p><p>
  <em> He left without a trace </em>
</p><p>
  <em> When I was a boy </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I slept at Heaven's gate* </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em> ... </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em> Yes, you know and so I wonder </em>
</p><p>
  <em> through it grows and grows </em>
</p><p>
  <em> when I was a boy </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I was a boy </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I was a boy.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>I have but one question for you at this point: what do you think this is about? Who is the ‘you’ in this song?</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>We will be talking further about this song, and about castles and Heavenly Gates* and soldiers of love, with Heaven Sent, with Calling to You, with Ten Years Gone, and god knows what else we’ll end up digging up in there. </p><p>We will be talking about childhoods and beginnings of the world and about times of innocence and slumber. We will talk a lot about the songs that emerged from the Page &amp; Plant project, where you can dig up the roots for a lot of what Robert later puts in the album <b>Carry Fire.</b></p><p>But for now we rest.</p><p>Send me your thoughts. I love all seven and a half of yous. Send me a word to let me know you’re there. (Literally, write “word” in the comments section. I’ll appreciate it.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Come on, "word!" </p><p>Better still, drop me a "Yallah!"</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. The Rain Song</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>About The Rain Song, one of the most important pieces in the entire catalogue. The origin of what we call over here "Robert's wisdom", the theme of the seasons of emotion and love as an ever-turning cycle, which Robert will use again and again referred to Jimmy and him. </p><p>I'll be drooling all over the place about their first meeting, for reasons. </p><p>We'll make a foray into 'Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp', comparing the original and the final version, and I hope the reason for tackling it will make more sense to you once we get there.</p><p>The theme of the seasons will point us towards many other Jimbert songs (it actually helps to spot which songs might be about Jimmy), and especially to 'The Only One' from 1998, and 'A Way With Words' from 2017, also crucial to follow and keep track of the Jimbert code through the ages and reincarnations.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Much rambling, I'm afraid, but you should have seen the previous drafts.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>THE RAIN SONG (The Song Remains The Same, 1973)</strong>
</p><p> </p><p><em>“I was always amazed I could find lyric and melody to complement the roaring 'Achilles Last Stand' or the caressing bleak beautiful [muse (?)] that is 'The Rain Song.' Just examples of the contrasts we experienced. The terrain, often bleak, sometimes remote, sometimes immersed in love, has been spectacular.”  </em> <em>(RP, 2007)</em></p><p>The Rain Song is important. One of <em>the</em> most important songs to follow the Jimbert across the length and breadth of Robert’s lyrics, and unlock the depth of meaning he’s infusing them with. The quote above, from the tribute Robert recorded for Jimmy for his Lifetime Achievement Award by Classic Rock Magazine, made me do an 80s ballad power-grab and a heartfelt “yasss...!” Because I had argued before that ALS represented the highest point of their romance, and that TRS represented the bleak times (<em>“Upon us all a little rain must fall / but it’s a little rain, that’s all”) </em>and this blessed quote was like a pat on the head and a smile and a “well done, lass.” (It also told me I was in the right territory associating the cycle of the seasons with the world. Double YASS.)</p><p>The Rain Song establishes the theme of the Seasons of Emotion, of love (their love, Robert’s and Jimmy’s) as a cycle that never stops turning, with its winters, summers, and springs. The theme will evolve into a world that keeps turning and changing, and he returns to that idea and those symbols again and again. You’ll find it in a myriad of songs, from <strong>‘The Rover’</strong> (1975) to <strong>‘Calling to You’ </strong>(1993), from ‘<strong>When The World Was Young</strong>’ (1998) to <strong>‘A Way With Words</strong>’ (2017), and many others in between. If you come across the seasons, or rain, wind and storms, or the world turning and/or changing in one of Robert’s lyrics, pay attention, because it’s probably about Jimmy. If there’s an old love in there somewhere, put the stamp on it with confidence. There is only one love in Robert’s life that “lingers on and on” and never dies. (It’s not me saying that, it’s him.)</p><p>It’s a singular song in that it revolves around this one theme, and sticks to it strongly. It wants to put an idea across and do it clearly and with conviction. It’s not enigmatic at all in that sense. But it has its mysteries.</p><p>One of those mysteries, which emerged the very first time I read these lyrics with attention, is a dissonance between the image or the perception I have about Robert Plant’s temperament and the person the three first stanzas seem to describe. We’ll examine that in detail but, in short, in the first three stanzas I see a person of a uuuh Saturnine disposition, prone to black, pessimistic thoughts and bleak perceptions. That’s... so not Robert Plant, to the point that made me think... did Jimmy somehow write this?? Or did Robert write this channelling Jimmy’s thoughts and emotions somehow?</p><p>The most likely answer, I suppose, is that the mood in the first three stanzas must be an affectation to establish the theme, exaggerating the gloomy feelings Robert may have experienced in the worst times. But hell<em>, “so little warmth I felt before”.</em>..</p><p>What gives? Do we not know Robert as much as we think we do? His relentless zest for life and apparently unassailable optimism, how does that co-exist with the “Keepers of the Gloom”?</p><p>Robert has talked about his demons, and we know this is a man who overcomes the unbearable by sheer force of will; we know he’s a damn fine actor too, who locks it all up inside and doesn’t share his pain with the world. But again, <em>“so little warmth I felt before”</em>?</p><p>So there, my greatest doubt concerning this song. Does it open a little window into a side of Robert I didn’t know was there, or is it affectation, aesthetic? Does it reflect Jimmy, does it represent a conversation between Jimmy’s emotions and Robert’s Wisdom? Or am I definitely looking in too deep this time and I’ve stopped seeing the wood for the trees? I don’t know, I don’t know. If I got to ask him one question someday, just one, it might be this one: what’s the story with The Rain Song?</p><p>While examining these lyrics carefully, I have put aside the (remote and unknowable) possibility that this is Jimmy’s voice somehow, and worked on the basis that, as usual, this is Robert speaking his mind and his feelings, and tried to learn what he’s saying, and where it might be coming from.</p><p>There’ll be much rambling too, I’m afraid, because if there is something this song never fails to do is turn me into a puddle of Jimbert love. You’ve been warned.</p><p>Shall we, then?</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong> <span class="u">THE RAIN SONG</span> </strong>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>It is the springtime of my loving</strong>
</p><p>Pretty clear, right? The dead branches of the Tree of Love sprouting new buds and shoots.</p><p>Is it a new person or the old love reborn? We don’t know yet. (Spoilers: it’s the latter.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>The second season I am to know</strong>
</p><p>This is 73, so their love is still young, though they don’t know that yet.</p><p>Over here, we will call the entire first period, from forming the band to its demise, as the first season, the Page/Plant period as the second, and we’re here with the old man watching The Jimbert Show on Jimmy’s website, crossing our fingers and waiting patiently for the third.</p><p>You can go into the minutiae of the timeline between summer 68 and 1973 to play the guessing game and try to figure out where this miniature Ice Age started and ended. I have like a hundred songs to work through yet, but let me know what you find out.</p><p>Soooo I don’t know when the first season of this song ended, but I know when it started. August 1968. The Yardbirds have fallen apart all around Jimmy. He wanted to keep going, and there are a few gigs left to fulfil the pending contracts. He’s trying to rebuild the band, applying the lessons he’s learned with the Yardbirds about autonomy and royalties and independence and whatnot. He has Peter Grant by his side. He’ll be bandleader, and things will be done his way. What he needs now is the right frontman... or at least someone to be the voice and the face of the New Yardbirds for those few gigs, until he finds another one.</p><p>
  <em>"I'd originally thought of getting Terry Reid in as lead singer and second guitarist but he had just signed with Mickie Most as a solo artist in a quirk of fate. He suggested I get in touch with Robert Plant, who was then in a band called Hobbstweedle.”</em>
</p><p>Purportedly, he asks Terry Reid “What does he look like?”, which Mr. Reid finds kinda strange. “What do you mean what does he look like? He looks like a Greek God, but he can really sing.” – I have to say, pretty frontmen do sell more records, and Led Zeppelin is a very, very good looking band. I wonder if Jimmy feared Robert might be prettier than him. (No worries, Jimjam, nobody is prettier than you.)</p><p>Jimmy continues:</p><p>
  <em>“When I auditioned him and heard him sing, I immediately thought there must be something wrong with him personality-wise or that he had to be impossible to work with, because I just could not understand why, after he told me he'd been singing for a few years already, he hadn't become a big name yet.”</em>
</p><p>Robert blew his socks off.</p><p>True to his style,* Jimmy has Peter Grant send Robert a telegram inviting him to spend a few days in <strike>his swanky shagpad</strike> his houseboat in Pangbourne. (*Jimmy is famous for asking third persons, such as roadies, to chat up girls for him. Like “hey, Jimmy wants to know you” kind of thing.)</p><p>
  <em>“So I had him down to my place for a little while, just to sort of check him out, and we got along great. No problems." </em>
</p><p>Some understatement, Jimmurs. They got along <em>famously</em>.</p><p>As for Robert, he is a young lad drifting from band to band. He’s been at it for a while, he’s even signed up with a record company, but it doesn’t seem to be taking off. Some people younger than him (like Terry Reid) are making it happen. Why not him? He has a number of odd jobs, laying tarmac, building (his looks will definitely benefit from it). His dad wants him to become a chartered accountant, Robert even goes to Accountancy school for a very brief period (is it really 2 weeks, Leds?) He promises someone (Maureen?) that if it doesn’t happen in a couple of years, he’ll find a real job. (He has absolutely no intention on sticking to that promise btw.)</p><p>He already has a literal following of women. He already has looks, charm, and charisma. He dated Shirley Wilson for some time, but that summer he has a baby coming with her sister, Maureen. So he’s not yet the Golden God, but he’s already Robert Plant.</p><p>And he’s seeking. Stumbling about, trying to find his place.</p><p>In comes Mr. Actual Rock Star, with his cosmopolitan ways, his enormous musical talent, and, incidentally one of the most beautiful men that have ever existed (Good Lord, that smile.) And he’s come to audition little old him! And Robert manages to impress him! Can you imagine that?</p><p><em>“I thought you were the roadie,”</em> Jimmy famously says. (Twenty years later, Robert’s still telling that anecdote.)</p><p>Jimmy tells him they’ll tell him something in a couple of days.</p><p>It only gets better from here.</p><p>Robert goes to posh, green, middle-class Pangbourne with his hippy looks and his Black Country accent. He gets to that weird house full of florals and lace and antiques. He’s so not in Kansas anymore.</p><p>
  <em>“I was a stranger there in your promised land</em>
</p><p>
  <em>That turned me inside out and turned me upside down.”</em>
</p><p>Oh, the first few minutes must have been cringingly painful for both. Robert the exuberant extrovert exploding with nerves in all directions, Jimmy the introvert, shy and reserved, looking at that natural born frontman who shook him up with his voice and performance, trying to figure out where’s the catch.</p><p>They start talking.</p><p><em>“On the first day we met, I realised the breadths of influence. The ideas we exchanged were vast, from William Blake to Skip James, from Kaleidoscope to Christina Rosetti, from Ottis Rush to Dylan Thomas.” </em>(RP in his 2007 tribute.)</p><p>Jimmy goes out for a bit, when he comes back Robert’s got some records out<em>. “These are the exact records I would have picked to play for you.”</em> (I’m paraphrising from memory JP quoted in ‘Hammer of The Gods’.)</p><p>Listen, I just. There is a reason why I’m here doing this, okay? Because this story. This fricking story.</p><p>They start talking, and I don’t know if you’ve ever had that, if you’ve ever met someone and it’s like, oh my god, it’s You. Awe and wonder. You like the same stuff, you like it the same way. You’re <em>vibeing</em>. The more you go inside, the more there is for you there. And in their eyes, the same look: Oh, it’s You, finally, miraculously. You are Found. You are Seen.</p><p>I’ve had something close to that, once or twice, though arguably not as electrifying as their thing. But it’s enough. Enough to imagine what it must have been for them. Just imagine that quiet boy bursting at the seams with interests and passions and ideas about life and music, who unexpectedly finds not just an adequate frontman, but a kindred spirit. They listen to the same stuff, they’re both massive music and literature nerds, they feel the music the same way. Ever seen an introvert in its element? We fucking <em>explode</em>.</p><p>They complement each other on a deep, deep level. Jimmy has the temperament of a teacher, a master, and Robert is an eternal, willing apprentice. Jimmy wants to show him everything he knows, and Robert wants to learn it all, soak it all up, listen, listen, listen. So there won’t be a contest for leadership, no rivalry, no battle of egos: Robert looks up to Jimmy, he defers to him. He is, and will always remain, his biggest fan. So, here is a boy with enormous, untapped potential, who wants Jimmy to Make Him, to help him become everything he can be. Wherever he’s rough, or amateurish, or unformed, Jimmy will polish him and guide him and help him get it all out, custom made to his needs. This is more than Jimmy could have expected. It’s more than he could ever fricking imagine. How about that?<em> – There is no catch.</em></p><p>And Robert? Robert is <em>found</em>. A singer looking for a band becomes an apprentice who’s found a master. And what a master. He has Ideas and Visions and a New Sound, and it’s powerful, and it’s <em>good</em>, and it’s going to rock the fucking world. And this bloke is telling Robert he wants <em>him</em> for that new superband. That he is what he’s looking for, that he has what he <em>needs</em>.</p><p>Robert knows good music and good musicianship when he hears them. And how he lives the stuff, how he laps it up. It’s in his veins. He feels it with the same intensity, if not more, as sex. And this is <em>James Patrick Page</em>, playing for him, flexing, showing him what he can do. The sounds Jimmy gets from his guitars, and how he gets them. Just imagine those two in the very first days, effervescent, excited, amazed, on a massive high with each other. It’s fucking pornographic. We know because we’ve seen it, on stage. Imagine behind closed doors...</p><p>By the by, Jimmy follows a cult which considers love (as in sex) a path to knowledge and magic and power and the transcendent, which encourages self-indulgence “done right”, and believes that sex with the right partner (the most compatible, the perfect one for you) is a source of power, and regards homosexual love (using the clinical term here) as the holiest form of them all.</p><p>They’re both hopeless romantics, in the “let feelings be monstruous” kind of sense. It’s what they want out of life. The extraordinary and the intense and the absolute. They’re both looking for the Fire. It was already a romance, it was always a romance.  </p><p>It’s hard enough to find a passion like that, deep and all-encompassing and real. It’s hard enough to find one that’s mutual. The chances that it goes hand in hand with reciprocated desire...? It hardly ever happens.</p><p>But it does happen. And this time, to the blessing of us all, it happened to a pair of wonderfully talented artists who clearly felt it was too great a story not to share it with the world, so they put it all in their art.</p><p>Two young men spend a few summer days together talking and listening to records and. Talking. They fall as hard for each other as the universe had devised, and the heart of one of the greatest rock bands of all times starts beating.</p><p>Here starts the first season.</p><p>The band came together, Jonesy, Bonzo. The spark took, they all define it as magic. They’re all handsome and wildly talented and Jimmy’s guitar and his bow and his theremin are already out there in Mars. Robert’s baby lion roar keeps getting louder. Jimmy calls it “the primal scream.”</p><p>They start touring. Small places at first, wherever they’ll have them. It’s working out. It’s a rise and rise and rise to bigger and better and shinier things. They know what they’re about, and they have Peter Grant behind them.</p><p>The chemistry between the bandleader and the frontman is off the charts. Jimmy moons at his vocalist with a hopelessly longing pair of bedroom eyes. Robert serenades him, sings “Since I’ve been loving you” right in his face. Jimmy stimulates Robert with his sounds and makes him moan in musical orgasm. It’s incredibly brazen, incredibly bold. They want to turn on the audience in every possible way, and they do.</p><p>They invent the guitar-player/vocalist dynamic. Only there’s no rivalry, no fight for supremacy, no homoerotic dance of aggression played for effect. You’ll never once see them “attack” each other with their, uh, respective instruments. They smile with twinkly eyes, they flirt like a pair of love-doves, they stare at each other with warm adoration, they melt with each other’s sounds. No, there’s no cock fight. Jimmy and Robert are making love up there, for hours at a time.</p><p>Robert’s just got married to Maureen, but his honeymoon is with the band, and with music as he had longed for, and with Jimmy.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>You are the sunlight in my growing</strong>
</p><p>Awww... what do plants need to grow and thrive? Sunlight. Aw.</p><p>Growing, learning, is a thing Robert sings about, for example, in Ten Years Gone. It’s a powerful element in their dynamic. They will always acknowledge and celebrate how mutually enriching their collaboration was, and Robert will admit Jimmy was his senior when they started, and he looked up to him and wanted to learn from him.</p><p>And he did. The apprenticeship with Jimmy turned him into an outstanding, brilliant producer. He’s never stopped learning and evolving, but if you don’t hear Zeppelin in Robert’s music, you’re missing something.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>So little warmth I’ve felt before</strong>
</p><p>This is the first line that left me perplex, and still does. Like, what the hell do I know but, this just doesn’t sound very Roberty? He comes through as such a luminous, fiery man. He falls in love so easily, he plunges into sexual entanglements with all his heart (though he’s famously advised his kids to wait before they use the word ‘love’, which he’s learned by getting chairs thrown at him. Lol.)</p><p>Anyway: he’d felt very “little warmth before”? Didn’t sound to me like Robert. But it did sound like Jimmy.</p><p>HAVING SAID THAT. Thinking about it some more, I think I got something...</p><p>Okay, so. ‘Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp.’ The one about the dog – Robert’s dog, Strider.</p><p>There was an earlier version of the lyrics. They are reproduced in page 153 of the Big Book, Led Zeppelin by Led Zeppelin, which I must remark, was lovingly curated and micromanaged by Jimmy.</p><p>It goes like this. (Everybody sing!)</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong> <em>“Caught you smiling at me</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>That’s the way it should be</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Like a leaf is to a tree </em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>                        -so fine.</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>  </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>All the good times we’ve had</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>I sung love songs so glad</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Always laughing never sad</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>                        - so fine.</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>  </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Cause you treated me kind</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Well I gave you my mind</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>That’s what others cannot find</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>                        - so fine.</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>  </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Keep on running away</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Fearing what they would say</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>If they found us this way</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>                        - so fine.</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>  </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>So what is there to do?</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Cause our hearts wasn’t true</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Got to keep on loving you</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>                        - so fine.</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>  </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Maybe someday in time</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>As we move down the line</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>What we seek we shall find.</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>                        -so fine.”</em> </strong>
</p><p> </p><p>...</p><p> </p><p>Do you need a moment? Yeah, me too.</p><p> </p><p>Eeeeerm, let’s hope it’s not about a dog, eh?, hur hur hur.</p><p> </p><p>I just...</p><p>
  <em>Maybe someday in time</em>
</p><p>
  <em>As we move down the line</em>
</p><p>
  <em>What we seek we shall find.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>                        -so fine.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>HM!</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“You will be mine by taking our time.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Oh, to sail away / to other lands and other days / Oh to touch the dream / Hides inside and never seen.”</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>And what about,</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“Keep on running away</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Fearing what they would say</em>
</p><p>
  <em>If they found us this way</em>
</p><p>
  <em>                        - so fine.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Uhhhhh, Shirley...?</p><p> </p><p><strong> <em>“</em> </strong> <em>Cause you treated me kind</em></p><p>
  <em>Well I gave you my mind</em>
</p><p>
  <em>That’s what others cannot find</em>
</p><p>
  <em>                        - so fine.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Oh.</p><p>Ooooooh...!</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Everybody I know seems to know me well...”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Slipping off a glancing kiss to those who claim they know...”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Well, fuck.</p><p>That insidious kind of oppression which is such a huge part of the queer experience in a heteronormative world, self-censoring and hiding who you are. Fear and alienation. The sense of living a double-life. The self-loathing, the shame. This shit kills people, both the humble and “normal” and the rich and successful.</p><p>And let’s not forget the times, how most men thought about women. Brought up different, with different expectations and purposes. Different interests, different spheres. They weren’t friends, they weren’t equals. You couldn’t find the companion of your soul with women. There were girlfriends and babymamas, girls you marry and girls you don’t. But just the same, you don’t bring out your sensitive inner feelings and thoughts with your mates. That’s not <em>manly</em>.</p><p>Fucking hell, it must be very, very lonely. Is that what “so little warmth I felt before” is about?</p><p> </p><p>Jimmy had dealt with the tricky turmoil of being raised a Catholic and being queer by embracing a cult where his impulses and his emotions were validated and endorsed.</p><p>And so, Robert found a soulmate in more ways than music and literature and the beat of his fannish heart. He found a bloke who felt like him, who was like him. And it was alright.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Caught you smiling at me</em>
</p><p>
  <em>That’s the way it should be</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Like a leaf is to a tree</em>
</p><p>
  <em>            -so fine.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>There’s this poem by Federico García Lorca from his “Sonetos del Amor Oscuro” (Sonnets of Dark Love – as in hidden love), a passionate, almost desperate celebration of gay love as a thing as irresistible and hungry and undeniable as nature itself. It ends with,</p><p> </p><p><em>“¡Que soy Amor, que soy naturaleza!” </em> <em>(“For I am Love, for I am nature!”)</em></p><p> </p><p>There is nothing wrong with this. It’s right. It’s the way it should be. Like a leaf is to a tree.</p><p>That’s gay pride. The roots of it.</p><p> </p><p>But what about the final version of the song though:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>... “Well, <span class="u">if the sun shines so bright, or our way is dark as night<br/>
The road we choose is always right,</span> so fine.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Ah<span class="u">, could any love be so strong when so many loves go wrong</span><br/>
<span class="u">Will our love go on and on and on and on and on and on</span>?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>As we walk down the country lanes<br/>
I'm singin' a song, hear me callin' your name</em>
</p><p>
  <em> <span class="u">Hear the wind whisper in the trees<br/>
Tellin' Mother Nature 'bout a-you and me</span> </em>
</p><p>
  <em>...</em>
</p><p>
  <em>So, of one thing I am sure, it's a friendship so pure<br/>
Angels singin' all 'round my door, so fine</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yeah, <span class="u">ain't but one thing to do, spend my natural life with you</span><br/>
You're the finest dog I knew, so fine.</em>
</p><p><em> <span class="u">When you're old and your eyes are dim<br/>
</span> </em> <em>There ain't no 'Old Shep' gonna happen again</em></p><p><em> <span class="u">We'll still go walkin' down country lanes<br/>
I'll sing the same old song, hear me call your name.</span> </em> <em>”</em></p><p> </p><p>*Stares into the distance*</p><p>Forty-seven years later: “<em>Bring on your late, late smile / Come on and dance another mile.”</em></p><p>Wow.</p><p> </p><p>(By the by, do dogs smile...?)</p><p> </p><p>SO:</p><p>1) I wonder why they changed the song. I mean, it works better as a song for a dog, it’s a nice twist, but, is that the reason? I mean, it’s very, very open... Could it be self-censorship? Did they think it went too far? Tell meeeeeeeee...!!!</p><p>2) How many alternative versions of other songs are out there? Which songs?? Robert do you need a kidney? Hell, you can have both, just after I have a look at your old notebooks...</p><p>3) This earlier version is in the book. <em>They put it in the fricking book.</em> Next to a big fish-eye photo of shirtless Robert looking a right snacc, btw. Hell, when I say the Jimbert is all over the place... The Jimbert is all over the place. To this very day, they keep putting it out there. That book I swear.</p><p> </p><p>We proceed.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>It isn’t hard to feel me glowing</strong>
</p><p>I suppose this means that their feelings are obvious, blatant. But, “feel me glowing” instead of “see me glowing”... Is that sexual innuendo, Mr. Plant?</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>I watched the fire that grew so low</strong>
</p><p>Honeymoons end. Things don’t stay the same. They worked their arses off, constantly on the move, several gigs a week, on the road for fifteen months. The entourage starts gathering. People all around, always, groupies, roadies. Then there’s the first glut of money and sex and drugs and fame. They play and sing and it’s wild and amazing, but there is no time for <em>them</em>, no time to enjoy together the things that first drew them to each other. The initial thrill and excitement die out. The first burst of passion dwindles.</p><p>And you know what? Love stories fade out and die all the time. It’s what usually happens. Especially extremely intense things like these: they shine brighter, but often they don’t survive becoming routine. By sheer statistics, it could have very well have ended there.</p><p>But oh, plot twist! The universe is not done with them yet!</p><p>Summer, 1970. After those fifteen months on the road, Robert takes Jimmy (and his wife, child, and Jimmy’s partner Charlotte), to a dilapidated cottage he used to go to when he was a child, a house called Bron-Yr-Aur. They’re away from the Carnival, away from all the din. No crazy parties, no groupies, no entourage, and no press. Not even electricity or running water. Back to basics. He “offers up the secret places, reveals the magic of the land.”And the fire burns bright again.</p><p>Lessons learned: They’ll be making time for more trips alone together. India, Thailand, Morocco.</p><p>In Headley Grange, in 73, they write The Rain Song. After many ups and downs, seems like they’ve learned something about their love. They put it in this song.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>It is the summer of my smiles</strong>
</p><p>Seasons. Smiles. Early ones, and late ones.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Flee from me, keepers of the gloom</strong>
</p><p>Interesting. Same as before, this is a line I can reconcile with my image of Jimmy, but I struggle to with Robert. ...But that’s just me.</p><p>Anyway. Keepers, not bringers. As if the gloom is the permanent feature and the light is the visitor. Gloom as something that doesn’t come from him, but from someone/somewhere else, these asshole keepers inside that make you gloomy when you don’t necessarily <em>are</em>. Demons you fight by laughing in their faces, even when you don’t feel like laughing much? Hm.</p><p>Maybe that’s just splitting hairs.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Speak to me only with your eyes</strong>
</p><p>That’s a big deal.</p><p>Don’t <em>say</em> the thing. We don’t have to <em>say</em> the thing. We show the thing. We don’t put a name to it / we don’t tell, but our eyes don’t lie. “I give my word, my lips are sealed” (‘The Only One’, 88) Hm.</p><p>They’ve stuck to it. And they certainly spoke with their eyes, alright.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>It is to you I give this tune</strong>
</p><p>I like this because only the intended person knows this is about them.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Ain’t so hard to recognize</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>These things are clear to all from time to time</strong>
</p><p>Uuuuh what things? The love they wear on their sleeve? How obvious it is that he’s glowing with it? Why “From time to time”?</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Talk, talk, talk, talk</strong>
</p><p>Aw, mahn. Watch <em>me</em>, Bookie, totally glowing. To me this sounds like “love me love me love me love me” and it <em>slays</em> me, okay? So shoot me.</p><p>In 1998, Jimmy asked Robert to write a song for his only solo album, ‘Outrider.’ Robert wrote “<strong>The Only One.</strong>” Ever heard that famous quote by Robert, “I already slept with him so I told him I would write a song”? (paraphrasing. The vid is on youtube.) It’s about <em>this</em> song, ‘The Only One’. We’ll be ooing and aahing about it very soon.</p><p>Well, in ‘The Only One’ you can hear “Talk talk talk talk! Talk talk talk talk!” Yes<em>, of course</em> it’s a self-reference. Just in case you had doubts that The Rain Song is about Jimmy.</p><p>They’re a pair of emotional exhibitionists and we’re all invited to the party. Fuck <em>me</em>.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>I felt the coldness of my winter</strong>
</p><p>Developing the main theme.</p><p>Just... why it’s “my” winter, not “ours”? Any ideas? Does it imply idk that the feeling is not mutual? Which of the feelings? The winter? The love? Idk.</p><p>Then again, you <em>can</em> look too close into things. The short of it, they were not doing well or even not quite together, and it felt bad.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>I never thought it would ever go</strong>
</p><p>In the depths of winter, it feels like spring will never come, but it inevitably will. And it does.</p><p>But just the same, when a love story begins (or re-starts) the clock starts ticking, and it’s a countdown.</p><p>
  <em>“Shall we dance and never stop?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Take my hand and stop the clock </em>
</p><p>
  <em>from turning over.” </em>
</p><p>(‘Wonderful One’, 94)</p><p>Time is the enemy of the lovers in Robert’s work. Spring is inevitable, but so is Winter. Damn.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>I cursed the gloom that set upon us</strong>
</p><p>More on that external gloom, something that is imposed on them. They don’t create it, it doesn’t come from them.</p><p>Things happen. Snow may fall, but underneath, love remains, waiting to grow green and lush and flowery, like my stupid prose when I’m taken by the Jimbert.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>But I know that I love you so</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Oh, but I know</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>That I love you so</strong>
</p><p>Aw.</p><p> </p><p>So these first three stanzas develop the theme, expose the situation.</p><p>The last stanza replies to them. It establishes what Leds called (which I shamelessly appropriated) ‘Robert’s wisdom’:</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>These are the seasons of emotion</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>And like the wind, they rise and fall</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>There. Spring, Summer, Winter. Love rises and falls. It’s like an element of nature. It <em>is</em> nature. Just as inevitable, just as <em>right</em>.</p><p>So much poetry (and songs) is about falling in love kind against the lover’s will, love as a force that seizes control and forces them to love whether they like it or not.</p><p>They often put the blame on the beloved when love ends, or rather, when it is withdrawn from the lover by the beloved. The lover is abandoned and the beloved is cruel for leaving them.</p><p>So the lover is not in control either... but the beloved is.  </p><p>Some poets have a more sophisticated look. As in, Life, you know, shit happens, stories end. It hurts, but hey, it’s no one’s fault. (thinking of Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan.)</p><p>In both cases, when push comes to shove, it’s all very human.</p><p>But Robert? Fuck that. Their love is Magical and Mystical.</p><p>And this was 1973, but the universe loves these two, and in 2017 <em>at least</em>, Robert’s Wisdom still applied. (No reason to believe anything’s changed since then btw.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>This is the wonder of devotion</strong>
</p><p>Continuing with all that stuff about the segregation of the sexes in the world where these two grew up... It’s quite a rarity, isn’t it? To find someone who can cover all the bases, home, passion, company, true friend of the bosom, wife, and lover. Home of your heart, traveling companion, and he still makes your uuuh fires burn fifty years on...</p><p>That’s the wonder of devotion. That’s why these two are the loves of each other’s life. Nobody does for the other what they do. Nobody else can be Jimmy to Robert, nobody else can be Robert to Jimmy. I envy them.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>I see the torch</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>We all must hold</strong>
</p><p>Carrying a torch is a common expression in the UK; what about in the US? It means having a crush on someone, but is it someone who doesn’t reciprocate, or did I add that in?</p><p>Anyway. Holding torches, carrying fires in naked hands.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>This is the mystery of the quotient, quotient</strong>
</p><p>Leds clarified this for me. Let’s see if I got it right.</p><p>A person can be interested in many people, love several people. The quotient would be the ratio, the portion of one’s life, or heart, or time, that appoints itself to a lover, sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller, and again, it’s something you don’t control.</p><p> </p><p>* The Only One:</p><p>
  <em>"I try to minimise, minimise"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I might have finally quantified, quantified"</em>
</p><p>(ooooh this one is JUICY!!)</p><p> </p><p>If emotions, love, are a natural, mystical force which operates as a cycle according to its own mysterious, unknowable laws, which are as alien to humans as the elements of nature, like the wind, the rain, the storm, and the turning of the seasons, then there is no need, or reason, for reproach or bitterness, blame or guilt.</p><p>Neither there is no cause for despair, because just as there is a winter, there sure as hell will be a spring.</p><p>It’s a very beautiful, very unique, very sexy way of saying “I’ll love you forever” and “through thick and thin, for better and for worse.” It’s a vow that makes itself and renews itself, again and again.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Upon us all, upon us all a little rain must fall</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>But it’s just a little rain, that’s all.</strong>
</p><p><em>“My tears they fell like rain.”</em> — ‘Since I’ve been loving you.’ Tears and rain are not specific to them at all, but they incorporated them into their symbology. They didn’t write SIBLY, but they fricking owned it.</p><p>Anyway, “upon us all” – it’s not just <em>their</em> love or their emotions that are a cycle. Everybody’s are. With Your Only One, that is.</p><p> </p><p>But in this place, in this song, it’s a promise, innit? Good times, bad times, but this is natural and fitting and like all things in nature, inevitable and… right? That’s the way it is. No point fearing it or cursing it. The cycle keeps turning. The world keeps changing, from season to season, “across the days, across the years”. But the song remains the same. And it's a love song.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“The terrain, sometimes bleak, sometimes remote, sometimes immersed in love, has been spectacular.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>We have imoldgreggory working on a thesis about 'A Way With Words.' Unfortunately, it's not the only thesis she's working on, so we'll have to wait.</p><p>In the meantime, I might try to break down the basics of AWWW soon, but mostly just try and stop me from sinking my teeth into 'The Only One,' a number of such horniness and emotional exhibitionism it makes me *blush.*</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. "From the lips of so many memory songs"</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>In which we dig deeper into "Memory Song (Hello Hello)" from Fate of Nations, 1993, and take it apart line by line. It might get rambly. Maybe you haven't even heard about this song. I trust by the time I'm done with this, you might want to check it out.</p><p>We will also offer an overview of the Jimbert situation in those days; we'll talk about the "queer code", make a case for Robert's code, how very carefully he chooses his words, and how hard he makes them work. We'll explore his urge to make himself (and his love for Jimmy) known to the world since forever, and his use of male pronouns in song. We might even pseudo-fic a little, for mood, for love. Let's see how you like it.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Here you will find canon (that is, factual, well-known public events) and a bit of headcanon (hypothesis and interpretations of what might have been going on underneath and backstage), which we get from putting together lyrics, interviews, empathy, and intuition. However, we've separated the two, and there should not be any confusion. </p><p>GD: I love Robert. I love him, okay? Moreover: I *like* him. It comes very naturally to me to start walking in his shoes, and I find it relatively easy. But, although I am very fond of him, I don't feel the same about Jimmy. </p><p>I do try to give a balanced account, and provide both points of view (my reconstruction of) and be fair, but put your critical reading skills to work here. I might be biased. (Then again, I feel everybody sides with Jimmy on the issue of reuniting the band and not wanting to tour after Celebration Day and all that. Maybe all I'm doing is trying to balance it out a little.)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“MEMORY SONG (HELLO HELLO)” Robert Plant (<em>Fate of Nations,</em> 1993)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The year is 1993. It’s been a long time. After Zep disbanded, Robert drifted for a while, but even as he wandered he was already on his way. He is a seeker, the journey is where it’s at. Because of that, he always hits the ground running. It’s in his nature, and it always will be, to change constantly, explore new sounds and new people, seek new music and new artists to work with and to learn from, to nourish his own music and his life.</p><p>And so, after a long apprenticeship with some of the best musicians in rock ever, to which he came as a clueless young thing, cocooned and nurtured and shaped by them, he longs to hear his own voice. </p><p>In those 13 years, he’s released 5 successful solo studio albums. Cut his hair, learned to do videoclips and publicity, given a lot of interviews. He has done everything he could to leave the Golden God behind. For some time, he even refuses to say the name of the band. (A few years after that he’ll feel a bit silly about it.) </p><p>He will receive popular and critical acclaim for his solo work, but he will never, never shake off the heavy shadow of the Golden God. To this very day, it’s still a permanent feature in every interview, in every public appearance, in every caption of every candid picture. He’s always “Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin”, like fricking Lancelot du Lac.</p><p>For all those reasons, Robert will say no again and again to reform the band, any sort of official reunion (except for Live Aid, best forgotten). </p><p>But there's no animosity towards the surviving members of the band. Especially Jimmy, of course, although the last years weren't their best. He's loyal, and still a shameless fanboy, and obviously very, very fond of him.</p><p>He wears a t-shirt with Jimmy on it on stage. He wears it to a couple of interviews in 1985, which get recorded in video for posterity.</p><p>Let me say it again, because we feel people don't appreciate this in all its dimension: <em>he wears Jimmy's t-shirt on stage, and he wears it to those interviews. </em>What an epic friendship.</p><p>Obviously, the interviewers ask him about it. He explains Jimmy gave it to him. Just like that. He says he’s been to see him with The Firm (in the first interview, the concert had been a couple of days ago; in the second one, it had been 2 weeks). He had never been able to just see him play, he says, and he was “spectacular.” He fawns and swoons over Jimmy’s guitar playing skills and his showmanship. “A modern Wagner”, “Master of the charade”, “An old tease.” He touches his hair and he turns smol and fey. (Please, slap some lipstick and a pair of tits on him, pretend he's a woman, tell me what you see.)</p><p>So Robert won’t hear about reforming the band, and he always remarks he’s focused on his own solo career, but in this interview, he says longingly “He won’t be with me now.” I wonder what the hell he means by that. </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Jimmy’s career post Zeppelin has been erratic. He’s hung up on the band still (and forever). He plays at charity events, joins up other guitar gods for sporadic appearances. The Firm is his most successful stable venture to date. He plays the old stuff and some new numbers. He brings out the bow and the laser beams and the double-necked, and it’s this show Robert will swoon about in those interviews. And he’ll play it, but Jimmy will never let anyone else sing Stairway, ever. Only the audience. "It's as yours as it is ours", he tells them.</p><p> </p><p>Jimmy and Robert collaborate a few times. Most remarkably, in 1988, Robert wrote for him “The Only One” for Jimmy's only solo album, <em>Outrider</em>. When they ask Robert about it, he says Jimmy had turned up one day at a session and played guitar for his album for 3 hours, then goodbye, no money, nothing.  Then Robert says, “Since I’d already slept with him anyway, I said I’d do a song for his album." Always joking, our Robert. Always joking.</p><p>We touch on this song here, but we'll have to talk about it in depth one day. It’s the one that goes “<em>Do you ever really wonder how I really feel? You’re the only one.</em>” </p><p> </p><p>Jimmy has told the press many times he’d like to work with Robert again. Who knows how many times he said it backstage and got turned down. Meanwhile, Robert said in that interview “He won’t be with me now.”</p><p>They both want something only the other one can give them. They’ve both had to reject and be rejected so many times. Sore.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>1993, enough is enough. Jimmy Page teams up with David Coverdale to make a record. Coverdale, the vocalist of the Whitesnake, is a mouthy, plucky, hunky blond with a powerful voice, in which absolutely everyone and their mother instantly recognises a carbon copy of Robert Plant.</p><p>For this project, Jimmy and David retire to a quiet spot to work on stuff. Jimmy puts Coverdale’s name first (he’ll never do that with Robert; or with anyone else, I don’t think). He creates a symbol with their initials entwined which looks like a cock and balls (remember the Page/Plant symbol? Look it up. Robert’s feather in a circle softly penetrating Jimmy’s Zoso symbol). In photoshoots, Jimmy appears whispering in David’s ear, he puts his arm around him, he looms over a reclining David and stares down at him with… what is that, possession? It’s a lecherous look indeed. What the hell is that about? Leaving aside the music, Jimmy Page blatantly uses this project to send Robert Plant a message: “I've moved on. I got another one now. I don’t need you.” Subtle as a brick. Well, he didn't intend to be subtle. It was a last-ditch attempt if I ever saw one.</p><p>The thing gets as ugly and, frankly, ridiculous, as you could expect. Robert goes full-bitch. He runs his mouth freely in interviews. He calls Coverdale "David Coverversion" (lol). He jumps on couches squealing when asked about it on TV. Literally. He doesn’t give a damn what it looks like. Or maybe he does, very much. He, too, is sending a message. Jimmy and David respond with quiet outrage and an innocent face, “no idea why he’s so upset”. They even act a bit hurt.</p><p>It's what we call "The Coverdale Debacle." Nobody looks good in it, tbh. But if you know where to laugh, it's pretty hysterical.</p><p> </p><p>But Robert can do more than jump on couches and unleash his pettiest wit on poor David. Also in 1993, he releases <em>Fate of Nations.</em></p><p> </p><p>Lots of ecology and politics in <em>Fate of Nations; </em>then a song called  “29 Palms” about paramour Alanna Myles (he denies it sometimes, you know how he is), a song about his son Karac, “I Believe”. “Promised Land”, one about going down on someone (on a plane?), very randy and funny and a bit silly. There’s also a terrible, terrible song (in the sense that it gives me cold shudders) called “Colours Of A Shade”, which offers a very open view into Robert’s mental and emotional landscape after the dissolution of the band. He gives no excuses, except for the imperative to go which is a constant in his character. It’s candid and sad and it’s heartbreaking and very beautiful. </p><p> </p><p>Then there’s the love songs: “Calling To You”, “Down To The Sea”, “Come Into My Life”, “The Greatest Gift”, a cover, “If I Were A Carpenter", and of course “Memory Song (Hello Hello)”. They all share the same theme: (we can play spot the Jimbert symbols as we go.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“When I get older, settling down, will you come down to the <strong>sea</strong>.”</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“Will you please carry me down to the sea.”</em>
</p><p>           </p><p>(Down To The Sea)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Send me just a sign, <strong>angel</strong> on my mind</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And if I should dream<strong>, I could dream of no other</strong></em>
</p><p>
  <em>Out here in the deep, hear my body cryin'</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Heaven knows the <strong>fire</strong> that I <strong>hide and recover.**”</strong></em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>(**Leds hears hide under cover or undercover)</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Look in my <strong>eyes</strong>, you'll see my heart, I will recover.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“I feel the <strong>world</strong> that moves inside</em>
</p><p>
  <em>This is the <strong>moment</strong> <strong>I have dreamt of all my life</strong></em>
</p><p><strong> <em>Reach out</em> </strong> <em> and touch, <strong>and you will find.</strong>”</em></p><p> </p><p>            (The Greatest Gift)</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“If I were a carpenter</em>
</p><p>
  <em> <span class="u">And you were a lady</span> </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Would you marry me anyway</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Would you have my baby?</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>If you were a carpenter</em>
</p><p>
  <em> <span class="u">And I were a lady</span> </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I would marry you anyway</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I would have your baby"**</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Save your love through loneliness</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Save your love through sorrow</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I gave you my onlyness</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Give me your tomorrow.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>(“If I Were A Carpenter”, lyrics by Billy Vera, covered by Johnny Cash, Bobby Darin, and others.) (Robert Plant chooses the covers he puts in his albums carefully, very very carefully - As he stated about <em>Dreamland</em>, an album containing only covers, the first he released after the Page/Plant era was over. Want to go break your heart? Have a listen.)</p><p> </p><p>**(If I were a lady / If you were a lady* That’s not random at all.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“<strong>Hopes</strong> drift in higher places, it's easier above the gloom</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Among the hollow of faces <strong>I know you're there, it must be soon</strong></em>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>And I must straighten up, review my disposition</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <em>Pour the <strong>hope</strong> back in my eyes I thought I'd <strong>lost so long ago</strong></em>
</p><p><strong> <em>Come into my life,</em> </strong> <em> here where nothing matters</em></p><p>
  <em>Come into my life and roll away the <strong>gloom</strong>.”</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>            (Come Into My Life)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Beyond the <strong>river</strong>, over the <strong>sea</strong>,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Somewhere past the last farewell that ever will be</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It’s <strong>calling to you, calling to you, calling to you.</strong>”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“What you gonna go, when you gonna stop?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Who stole the <strong>keys to the gates of the castle of love?</strong>”</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>            (Calling to You)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Carry me down,” “Send me a sign,” “Hear my body cryin’”,  “Reach out and find”, “Come into my life”, "Give me your tomorrow", “Calling to you,” ("have my baby" :D) and of course, ”Hello hello.”</p><p> </p><p>So, slap-dashed chronology of a very busy few months: 1993, Jimmy is working with David Coverdale and talking about it as if it’s a long-term thing and there’ll be more albums. That same year, <em>Fate of Nations</em> comes out. So to speak.</p><p>By 1994, Jimmy has dropped Mr. Coverdale, and Robert and Jimmy are back together again in a long-term collaboration. A marriage, they call it. Before the year is over, they’ve put out a new record, and they’re on a world tour with an Egyptian orchestra, breathing new world music life into the old Zep numbers. It’s the “Page/Plant era.” Around here we also call it The Second Season.</p><p> </p><p>Would it be accurate to say that both Jimmy and Robert got what they wanted, what they’d been wishing for over a decade?</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>There is a lot to say about <em>Fate of Nations,</em> especially when you look at it from the present day, after <em>Carry Fire</em> (2017). There are a number of parallels. I talk about them in previous chapters of this thing. The first and foremost, both <em>Carry Fire </em>and <em>Fate of Nations</em> are Robert’s mating song to get Jimmy back. (Speaking of parallels: as of early 2021, according to David Coverdale, he is in talks with Jimmy to remaster their album and maybe even do new work.) (!!) </p><p> </p><p>We claim with so much assuredness that FoN is about Jimmy because Robert tells us himself. Literally. In the coda of “Calling To You”, Robert calls indeed “Oh Jimmeh!”. Yes, for real. I know right? There is a lot more to say about this song too, but “Calling to you  -- Oh Jimmy!” is pretty self-explanatory. (And, as usual, kind of baffling: what do people who hear this make of it? What the hell do they tell themselves it's about? Why the fuck is it not common knowledge that Robert Plant…? Never mind. Forget it. Moving on.)</p><p> </p><p>Next to it stands “Memory Song (Hello Hello)”, which is the one I’ve decided to focus on today. Because I love it, and because it’s remarkable in many ways. For one, there are no obvious Jimbert codewords here. To work it out, you have to go by other paths. But the song is jam-packed with stuff nevertheless, and we'll indulge at length on what we see in it. </p><p>As usual, the song is a riddle that quickly gets resolved when you operate on the hypothesis that this is Robert addressing Jimmy.</p><p> </p><p>Let’s have a look.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong> <em>On my mind - all my talk</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>From the lips of so many memory songs</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>*Prince of cool* - are you lost without the crew**?</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>**Beneath divided**, we had our day</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>But hell provideth, I'm sad to say</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>  </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Hello, hello, hello</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>I saw you once before</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>In my dreams you've come to call</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>You are my friend, you are my friend</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>You touch my soul</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>  </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>You touch my soul</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Hello, hello, hello</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Hello, hello, hello”</em> </strong>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>(* and **: Just like in Zeppelin times, Robert rarely publishes his lyrics in print, on album booklets or whatever. Without an “official” version to rely on, we may hear different things. This is significant. Robert, we know, thrives on a degree of mystery and ambiguity.</p><p>I hear “Prince of Cool”, and I believe it makes the most sense in the song, but Leds suggests it could also be “sun, breaks the cool”; in that case, the meaning of the song would change (it would be less snarky) but I would argue that it wouldn’t change in a significant manner. I would still argue without hesitation that it’s a love song about Jimmy, for Jimmy. It’s a matter of cumulative evidence. You can remove a lil chunk but the fucking mountain ain’t bothered.</p><p>We also believe Robert alternates “without a crew” with “without a clue”.)</p><p> </p><p>There’s no “for dummies'' in this one. There are many things about it I am not sure of. But just like with “Calling To You”, which is full of “fucking whats???” with or without the Jimbert, the message is very clear. In “Calling to You” is… “Jimmy I’m calling to you'' lol. In Memory Song is “Jimmy I keep thinking about you** and I love you.” This is how I worked that out:</p><p> </p><p>**And he <em>dreams</em> about him! Dreams are a big deal for Robert, beyond the “No Quarter” sense of it. I mean, he calls an album of covers (the first one he released after the Page/Plant project fell apart) <em>Dreamland</em>. He has other lyrics about dreams and sudden needs. I think Robert is a big sap for his own subconscious and dreams are a big deal to him, waking and sleeping. (das Leds) --And as you’ve pointed out often, Robert sometimes writes he wakes up <em>wet</em>. With tears or other things, or both, dunno.</p><p> </p><p>We have the “Prince of Cool lost without a crew”, who is Jimmy Page – because a) who else and b) because the rest of the record (“Oh Jimmeh!”).</p><p> </p><p>We have “memory songs”. That’s Led Zeppelin, the songs Robert wrote with Jimmy. </p><p> </p><p>Then we have <em>“In my dreams you’ve come to call”</em>, a classic romantic trope, and we have “<em>You touch my soul”, </em>which is how estranged former bandmates try to express their willingness to sign a truce and maybe reunite in a professional capacity, as everybody knows. </p><p> </p><p>And of course, we have the rest of the love songs in the album, we have the background, the context, and we have excellent hindsight too. </p><p> </p><p>There is all of that, which guides us, but of course, there's lots more. So, no “for dummies”, but let’s break it down line by line just the same, and maybe you have some ideas for me:</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>“On my mind - all my talk*</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>From the lips of so many memory songs</strong>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>Talk* (maybe even “tongue”), lips. Very oral. The songs have lips through which they speak for Robert. Which songs? Memory songs. From the past.</p><p> </p><p>“All my talk” = all the things I’ve said? </p><p>L: is this also meaning his 'talk' in his lyrics - all the truth about Jimmy and him he has put into the songs for such a long time?</p><p>Memory songs: say, “What Is And Never Should Be”, “The Rain Song”, “Ten Years Gone”, “Achilles Last Stand”… Songs Robert wrote for Jimmy, about Jimmy, in which he told him (and the world) about his feelings for him, and he told us their story.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <strong>Prince of Cool* - are you lost without a crew*?</strong>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>Prince of Cool: such a cool epithet. – Robert the fanboy, the eternal apprentice, still looking up to his master, to this Wagner of Modern Times, Master of the Charade. But also, maybe, cool as in cold? (“He won’t be with me now.”) Maybe both. (L: “I wait for you like so many others do” CF, 2017!!)</p><p>
  
</p><p>“Lost without a crew” – what is the crew? The band, Led Zeppelin? -- since he’s been going from here to there without a permanent group of collaborators. Is it the entourage? (Roadies, assistants, money men, groupies, journalists, fans, sycophants…?) The Carnival is over, the Zeppelin flying circus is long gone. They were gods once, forever surrounded by a court of worshippers and servants; now they’re mortal men, mere musicians who have to earn recognition again as individuals, a fight uphill against what they accomplished with Zep. So, the crew:  which one is it? Either? Both?  </p><p>In any case, it conveys the sense that Jimmy stands alone now. This Prince of Cool is missing something and he seems lost without it. Robert taunts him for it. </p><p> </p><p>(If it’s a sly dig about Coverversion, meaning “You’re so lost you even team up with That Bitch to make me jealous, what the hell are you doing with your life!” weeeell I can’t really cut it that thin.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Stars still shine - winds will howl</strong>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>“Stars will shine” – I don’t know if this is about astrology, and so fate is at play here, or a way of saying that the universe goes on regardless (of…?) </p><p> </p><p>Stars will shine, winds will howl - Both convey a sense of the natural world doing its thing way beyond the power or control of the mortals down here. If that’s a consolation or a curse, I don’t know.</p><p> </p><p>But can we go deeper? Weeeell we could use The Jimbert Code, see what it gets us.</p><p> </p><p>The winds also howl in “No Quarter” (<em>The Song Remains The Same</em> 1973). They’re terrifying winds in that song, which talks about a harsh, hostile world which the unnamed warriors must brave <em>“to carry news that must get through / to build a dream for me and you.” </em>Hm. </p><p> </p><p>In “The Rain Song” (TSRTS 73) the wind does something else: “the seasons of emotion, like the wind they rise and fall.”</p><p> </p><p>In “A Way With Words” (CF 2017) again we get (potentially howling) winds (“storm”) and seasons:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Leave me here alone</em>
</p><p>
  <em>For just as long as it takes</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The seasons turn</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Waiting for the weather to break</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Blowing** up a storm now.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>If this is indeed about the relentless cycle of the Seasons of Emotion, when the winds howl, when the storm is blowing up, emotions are running high and burning strong. We have a pretty good idea about Robert’s emotional state at the time of writing this, so we could venture this interpretation: Remember about those pesky emotions which are like the wind that rises and falls? Well, Jimmylove, the wind is howling right now = My love is raging. </p><p> </p><p>**SO. Edit. The booklet of Carry Fire actually contains the lyrics this time, cool eh? So it's NOT "blowing up", it's "Loving up a storm" (which is what I used to hear but I let the internets rule over my ears, tisch.)</p><p> </p><p>I'm going to level with you: I don't know what "Loving up a storm now" means. Not uuuh specifically. Take three steps backwards and of course you get Storms and Love, and you're okay now. Seasons of emotion, the wind has risen. It's not much different from the meaning I got from "blowing up a storm", but it's very very interesting because... Has anybody here ever heard the expression "to love up a storm"??? Me neither.</p><p>Robert chooses his words carefully. "Blowing" made more sense in relation to storms (and winds that rise and fall). But no, it's "loving". There is a POINT here being made.</p><p>Of course we knew this is a romantic storm because the song itself is romantic, so it's not a game-changer, but it's intriguing, innit? He always does that. Wily old man. Trickster, skilled wordsmith...</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong> <em>All my friends sense you now</em> </strong>
</p><p> </p><p>Ah, yes.</p><p> Well. First of all. “Friend.”</p><p> Later on in this song, Robert sings “You are my friend, you touch my soul.” We’ll get to that. </p><p>As for this particular “friend”: in queer code, it means my boy/girlfriend, my lover. Ask Leds, ask the experts, do your research. It’s what it means.</p><p>*Leds: A lovely instance of this is in <em>Prick Up Your Ears </em>(Joe Orton’s biography by John Lahr, based on his diaries, which are also published and easy to find. Stephen Fears adapted into a movie with Gary Oldman and Alfred Molina, which is how Orton overcame the relative obscurity in which he had fallen after he died.) </p><p>Orton was a brilliant up-and-coming playwright in the 60s, who was tragically killed, out of professional jealousy (mostly; it’s always complicated, isn’t it?) by his long-time lover, hit in the head with his own theatrical award. </p><p>Joe Orton's publisher/ editor says in the play/film "He said I can bring my friend next time - and I thought, does he mean friend? Yes, he does mean friend." The point is, this is done with very slight inflection - if it is obvious or verifiable, it does not work. I mean, to this day, many queer people I know who arrive in my life as migrants from more hostile countries say it just the same.**</p><p> </p><p>Why do we believe this is what Robert means here? Several reasons: because of the “you are my friend – you touch my soul” we’ll talk about later, because this is a love song, and because this line, as it so often happens with Robert’s work, is clearer and makes more sense when you factor in the queerness.</p><p>“My friends sense you” suggests signals given and perceived, something revealed unwittingly. It’s not “I tell all my friends about you”. It rather means “I try to hide you’re on my mind but currently I’m not doing a great job of it.”</p><p> </p><p>Do you want to play a lil game?</p><p>Ok, so, from “The Only One”, <em>Outrider</em>, Jimmy Page, 1988, lyrics by RP:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Well I can't sit down but it looks like I'm moving again</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And there we sit - we oughta try</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I try to minimize, minimize, minimize.”</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“What is it about you that I feel inside but I can't explain?”</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“It's just to some extent you linger on and on again</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It's very strange - it's very strange.”</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“Do you ever really wonder how I really feel?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You're the only one.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>And have a look at this; it’s from “8:05”, a song which didn’t make it to the final cut of FoN in 1993, but was released in the remastered album in 2006 as a bonus track.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong> <em>“Eight oh five, I guess you're leaving soon</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <em>I can't go on, without you it's useless to try</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Oh <strong>to love you was so good</strong></em>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>To keep you would be so wonderful</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <em>Here is my heart</em>
</p><p>
  <em>That I give, it's all that I have</em>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Please change your mind</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Before my sunshine is gone</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Do you think you could try</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <em>Do you think you could try</em>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Do you think you could try</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Oh, understand how I feel</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Until I can prove that it's real</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <em>Fill my world with <strong>rain</strong></em>
</p><p>
  <em>You know your tears would only bring <strong>rain</strong></em>
</p><p>
  <em>My heart, oh, eight-oh-five</em>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>I guess you’re leaving, good-bye.”</em> </strong>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Well, shit. I’ve fucking written this fic.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>I did not know about this song until I started writing this particular meta. I based my headcanon on the interviews, on the photos, on how the situation developed, on the Coverdale Debacle, on Leds’ insights, on empathy and intuition, on <em>the vibes</em>. </p><p> </p><p>So, the headcanon game. See how you like it.</p><p>The situation as I see it: between 1980 and 1994, Jimmy and Robert don’t see each other much, don’t socialise (their words) but every now and again they do get together. They still love each other, they still want each other, it happens. Sometimes Jimmy spends the night. But he won’t stay. “He won’t be with me now.” ("<em>My heart, oh, eight-oh-five.<strong> / </strong></em><em>I guess you’re leaving, good-bye.”)</em></p><p>Why doesn’t Jimmy stay? -- Because he wants the music too, he wants the full partnership. He wants Robert to give up his solo career so they can work together again as a team. He wants to tour and play the old Zep numbers with his one and only. Vocalist. </p><p>We have a conundrum.</p><p>I imagine Robert on the unmade bed of some hotel somewhere, staring vacantly at the ceiling as Jimmy gets ready to go. Maybe he’s asked him to stay a little longer, maybe he doesn’t even try anymore. Maybe there have been some reproaches, maybe they don’t even do that at this stage of the game. The sense of pointlessness and hopelessness leaves them empty when the passion is sated. I imagine Robert after the door closes, wondering what the fuck are they doing, smarting from the umpteenth rebuff. Doesn’t Jimmy love him as much as Robert loves him?</p><p>I imagine Jimmy out the door, wondering too what the fuck are they doing. Jimmy has been watching Robert do his thing, work with other people, pull further and further apart. Maybe for a while he had hoped he’d come around. Maybe he believed Robert needed his time away, but sooner or later he’d come back to being Jimmy’s voice, because what could be better than that? Who? They touched the sky with the band, everything else is fool’s gold. Surely Robert will want to touch the sublime again. Surely, he’ll come around in time.</p><p>But it’s been a decade, and Robert’s still as adamant, still as stubborn, still unmoved. It’s becoming painfully clear that he really means it, he doesn’t intend to come back. </p><p>The situation is stuck, locked, and dire. Nothing has changed for such a long time. It only gets more bitter and more sour with every negative, every rejection.</p><p> </p><p>It’s a big fucking deal, what Jimmy is asking of Robert. Nobody has more to prove than him. He was a kid when he started with Zeppelin, he spent his entire youth under Jimmy’s powerful wing and his very heavy shadow. Jimmy and Jonesy are respected as serious technical artists, true <em>virtuosi.</em> Robert is a performer. Who takes him seriously as a musician? Who takes him seriously, period? All his life will be a race against himself, against the Golden God, one he already knew he’d lost back then. In those days, he despises the Golden God, he has very little respect for him, the things he did, the life he led, the Carnival he tolerated and went with in those days. It was never who he was, but he was young and stupid and drunk on it all. He’s not that kid anymore, but that's what people want him to be, that's who they wished he was, forever. They wish he’d just lock himself up in a glass case, or even better, hide in a cottage in the Welsh border somewhere and withdraw from sight, spare everyone the sad sight of his decadence. </p><p>The bugger gets in the way of everything he tries to do. He will always be on that stage as if on a pedestal, frozen in time, forever young, forever one of the most beautiful creatures anyone has ever seen, forever the voice and the face and the body of Led Fucking Zeppelin, in a magical time in which the planets and the stars aligned for four men who were ready for it, circumstances which can't be repeated or replicated. Zeppelin will never come back, and the Golden God went away with it.</p><p>Meanwhile, the real Robert will only get older, lose his looks <strike>(NEVER!!)</strike>, lose his voice <strike>(it's just softer)</strike>. He makes music, not magic. He’ll never write another Stairway, another Kashmir. He’s only human, he can’t shake up rock history twice, can he? Not even Jimmy the Wagner of Modern Times can do that.</p><p>But he won’t just lie down and take it, will he? What is he to do, lay down and die? He's still young and full of fire, his life has only just begun. So he seeks new people, he makes new songs, and he puts himself out there, even though the critics and the audience will always compare him and find him wanting.</p><p>Well, fuck them, and fuck that kid. He takes it, picks himself up, and goes out there again. And you know what? It might not be Led Zeppelin, but he’s learned a thing or two about good music in his time, and he’s not doing bad at all. And so, finally, <em>finally</em>, he’s finding out who Robert Plant really is, what he wants, what he likes, he’s getting some respect for his work, he’s cementing his profile as an individual and an artist. </p><p>But Jimmy keeps asking him to give all that up if he wants them to be together. How can he ask him that? Doesn’t he understand what it means to Robert? - Maybe it makes him feel that, to Jimmy, all his work is worthless, his solo career is worthless, and nothing will be lost if he gives it up. That he shouldn’t bother with it. Maybe, in his lowest times, Robert feels that, to Jimmy too, he doesn’t measure up to the Golden God, and he never will. <em>Ouch</em>.</p><p>But... "He won't be with me now." <em>"You linger on and on again.</em>" Robert goes about his day and has plenty of lovers and relationships and fun and even a child, but he's always, always pining, Jimmy constantly on his mind, roaming lost with Robert's heart in his hands.</p><p> </p><p>On the other hand, what the hell does <em>Robert</em> want? Be together, how? They both leave for work at 8 o’clock, come home at 6, a bit of telly, read in bed a bit, kiss goodnight, like any ordinary marriage? Hell, no, that’s not them. They were the Golden God and the Black Dragon, for Christ’s sake. They used to go out there on stage and rocked the world and fucked each other’s brains out before the very eyes of the largest crowds ever gathered for a rock concert, and people worshipped them and lost their minds about them and were electrified by their love. When they wrote songs together, magic was made, history of music happened. They’re not Tim and Suzy from n.18 Allendale Crescent. They can’t have that life. They fucking <em>shouldn’t. </em>They can get that kind of shit with just about anyone else. No, that’s not who they are. That’s not what Jimmy wants. It would not make him happy.</p><p>They belong on the road. They should take up their journey where life or fate screwed it up, and live the kind of adventures only a pair of rock stars on tour get to experience. Being on stage together, making musical love to each other where everyone can see them, bonded, creating and sharing a kind of joy and exaltation that is not possible with anyone else, for better or worse. That’s what they are. That’s who they are. It's got to be all or nothing.</p><p>It’s true, times have changed, the band is gone, and life is smaller and greyer and ordinary. Jimmy hates the present, he feels robbed. He knows there’s no going back. But there’s something that would make it more bearable, maybe even make him happy, make him feel alive again, and it’s in Robert’s hands. He has all that power over Jimmy, and he chooses again and again to deny him. He could make Jimmy happy, he could give him everything, bring the light and the music and the magic back to Jimmy’s life, but he puts his career first. Does Robert not love him as much as Jimmy loves him?</p><p>That's the knot, the lock, the conundrum. Here they've been stuck for many years now. Only Jimmy's Coverdale maneuver will unlock it. What Robert sacrifices to be with Jimmy, the depth and breadth and reach of the concession he makes, nobody will ever acknowledge. Worse: while Coverdale/Page was celebrated precisely because it was an exercise in reliving old glories and the same sound, Page/Plant will be under all sorts of fires. The most painful (for me anyway) is that Jimmy caved in to Robert's demands and softened up when he went with the silly world music shit <strike>(I love that album, for the record.)</strike>  "World music" is something they'd both been interested in since before Zeppelin, and it was one of their shared things. However, considering the kind of stuff Jimmy had been doing with Coverdale, what seemed to interest him at the time, it could very well be that it was a concession to Robert, who did not want to return to the past. It would only be fair, wouldn't it?</p><p> </p><p>They wrote songs together again (one of my all-time favourites among them, "Wonderful One"), they went on tour again, they performed their mating rites and seductions on stage again, they had a ball, they lived their adventures, and they seem very happy, and very, very married, until it all fell apart.</p><p>The love did not end, though. At least on Robert's side, it's still alive and kicking hard, to this day.</p><p> </p><p>(Now, where the hell were we)</p><p> </p><p>So basically Jimmy is Robert’s one true love (DID I JUST USE THAT LINE UNIRONICALLY? I GUESS I JUST DID!), and he’s pining like a motherfucker. And while he fucks around like he does, by reputation and by his own admission, and even while he has other relationships, some of considerable importance (he had a child in 91 with Shirley Wilson, his ex-wife’s sister) his heart and his mind are always a little bit elsewhere.</p><p>And we come to this line: “All my friends sense you now.” </p><p>In straightese: “the people I go for drinks with or hang around for fun notice I’m thinking about you, old friend and bandmate. (They think it’s a bit too intense and a bit weird, but they always have, and they’ve never put two and two together, have they?)”</p><p>In queerese: “I’ve managed to hide it more or less all this time, but now I’m pining so hard all my lovers can feel that I’m thinking of someone else, and it’s getting awkward.” </p><p>So basically the same: I’m thinking about you. You’re on my mind. You’re haunting me. </p><p>What I think this means, ultimately, is that Jimmy’s presence was getting in the way of things. It was certainly getting in the way of Robert falling in love, or at least staying in love, or having a successful relationship with anyone else. <em>And it always will.* </em>(God I love them.)</p><p>(*Except with Patti Griffin. Another musician who came to him with her own career and tastes and talent, and could teach him things; they wrote songs together, they performed together, Robert looks at her lovingly singing “Gotta find the queen of all my dreams.” -- Where have I seen this before? -- But even that doesn’t last. It’s the way of things. Geography is to blame for a lot of it -- Robert's family is in Britain, he's well rooted one ocean away from her own haunts, always has been-- but I wonder if Patti sensed Robert’s Friend as well.)</p><p> </p><p>(So this became another massive ramble but I enjoyed it. How was it for you?)</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>**Beneath divided**, we had our day</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>But hell provideth, I'm sad to say</em> </strong>
</p><p> </p><p>This one is very fiddly. First of all, because the first word is not clear. I used to hear “We divided”, then there’s this “beneath”. I think there is room for even more possibilities. Again, we come across the problem of the lack of an official, Robert-approved version of the lyrics to light the path for us, which is intended, I'm sure. Bugger.</p><p> </p><p>Either way, it’s a puzzling notion. “We had our day but hell provideth” seems to refer to me to their First Season, that is, the relationship from 69 until Zep disbanded, the first leg of their lifelong journey, which was savaged by a series of misfortunes and tragedies just after they both touched eternity on the shoulders of the Atlas in 1975. </p><p>The end of it all started with Robert’s car accident in Rhodes, continued with the death of Robert’s son Karac, and culminated in John Bonham’s death. From 76 onwards, we can see Jimmy’s health deteriorating before our very eyes. So, this is what I think of when Robert says “we had our day but hell provideth.”</p><p> </p><p>To “have your day” means to have your time to shine, your opportunity, your turn around the wheel. It’s a positive image, and it implies that you only get the one chance. So what does that have to do with “beneath divided” or “we divided”? Surely they were “united” when they had their day? Anyone has more ideas about what Robert really says, or what he might mean??</p><p> </p><p> WHATEVER IT IS, it refers to a shared past with some good and some hell in it, which put an end to “their day”, their turn around the wheel.</p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong> <em>Hello, hello, hello</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>I saw you once before</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>Okay. I would be at a loss here, if I had this and nothing else to go on. But I have lots more, don’t I? </p><p><em>Walking to Clarksdale</em>, 98, the second and last album of the Page/Plant era, “When the world was young.”</p><p>
  <em>“I <strong>saw</strong> you - I knew you and I touched you</em>
</p><p><em>When the world was young</em>”</p><p>There. “I saw you once before” / “I saw you” (and “I knew you” and “I touched you”). Good, excellent. But… what does it mean?</p><p>If we throw in “Talk to me only with your eyes” from TRS, we could entertain the notion that “I saw you once before” means “In the past we loved each other”.</p><p> </p><p>But there’s more fun to be had from this line: what about “seeing” as in “knowing”? Kind of “I see the real you”? -- But then, what about the “I knew you” that comes after, in “When The World Was Young”? wouldn’t it end up sounding kind of silly?  “I knew you and I knew you”?? Well, since we’re talking alternate meanings, and given that the entire song (WTWWY) is written to remind you of a pseudo-Christian hymn, in Christian Religion lingo, “knowing” means fucking. (“I've known him biblically” = we had sex.)</p><p>But again, this leaves us with a silly conclusion: “I knew you and I fucked you and I touched you”. Bit reiterative? What’s with that, then? – AH! Glad you asked. Spoilers, but “You touch my soul” means “I love you.”</p><p>THEREFORE; “I saw the real you - I knew you inside out, and we fucked, and I loved you, back in the Zep days when we - and the world - was young.” Neat!</p><p>Of course, WTWWY will come years after Memory Song, so maybe this is all nonsense. Or maybe Robert already had his own meanings attached to “seeing”, derived from TRS, and used it again in that later song, and this is not nonsense, actually, so there.</p><p>As Leds very wisely points out, what if it’s simply “I literally saw you for the first time (we met - we fell in love at first sight / it was fate?), I got to know you, and I fucked/loved* you.”  (*”You touch my soul” - “I’m gonna give you every inch of my love” - you know.)</p><p> </p><p>It could work on all or some of those levels at the same time, it could mean all or some of those things, or maybe others, <em>as well</em>. Why limit yourself in poetry.</p><p> </p><p>Whatever it be, in the most basic reading, “I saw you once before” reminds the Boo, sorry the Lover, of What They Once Had.</p><p> </p><p>BUT WAIT CUZ I’M NOT DONE YET. “When The World Was Young” is an ignored, overlooked song, and it shouldn’t be, if nothing else because of how very fucking brave it is. (I probably shouldn’t go on about it here, but fuck it.)</p><p>The verse goes:</p><p>
  <em>“I saw you, I knew you, and I touched you</em>
</p><p>
  <em>When the world was Young.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I saw <strong>him</strong> - I knew <strong>him</strong> - I touched <strong>him</strong></em>
</p><p>
  <em>When the world was young”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>“When the World Was Young” means the Zeppelin era. More on that some other time, but the subject of the band being Robert’s childhood and the beginning of the world and life as we know it is established and developed in other songs in <em>Clarksdale, </em>and it’s clear.</p><p><strong>But </strong>more importantly: surely you have noticed the <em>male pronouns.</em></p><p>So the thing is, like we said, the whole song is written in a sort of pseudo-Christian, pseudo-religious tone, kind of evoking the language of the mystics, if you will, in which the love of god is expressed as the kind of exaltation one experiences in romantic love, even in sexual ecstasy.</p><p>The thing is, like Jimmy, Robert was raised a Catholic (thanks Leds), so he’s familiar with the lingo, the symbols, the rites, etc. But he did not grow to be a Christian. If he is anything, in the sense that he may be interested in some sort of “external” religion or system of beliefs, he is a pagan. He was then and he always has been, to this day.</p><p>Some people (many people) ventured that he had converted precisely from this song, and others which use a similar language and images. Apparently, in some Zep (straight) forums, people are losing it because he allegedly converted to Islam??</p><p>There is no proof at all, no statement or confirmation on his part, no indication, that he has converted into any religion. What's more, what we have is declarations which suggest he gives religion a wide berth - say, an interview for a radio show, image recorded as well, he looked damn fine, in which he talked at length about the music he's listening to, his influences, etc. For once, I think Zeppelin did not come up? Wow. He is asked to name his current "desert island" album. I can't fricking remember it (I never heard of the band). The host needles him, you know they say they are (what was it, fundamentalist Christians? that was the gist of it) with the implication that this should cause rejection in Robert. He deflects. "I'll take your word for it." The impression I got was - meh whatever I'm here for the music.</p><p>So why the fuck should he write a hymn to god, any god, in 1998?</p><p>The most reasonable assumption is that he didn't. So what is that song about?</p><p>By sheer elimination, it's simply a love song about a person who uses male pronouns. A love song for a man.</p><p>“Karac!” some people will always jump and say, as if this was the only male being Robert could ever show tender emotions to in a song.</p><p>But it’s <em>not</em> Karac. Reasons: First of all, no. Second of all, absolutely not. I mean, if it was addressed to the actual Christian god, “I saw you, I knew you, and I touched you” would be very very naughty, bordering on blasphemy. To your own child? Get outta here.</p><p>But just in case someone wants to put up a fight for the “way of the mystics” and argue that “seeing, knowing, and touching” are symbolic and metaphoric and there is more room for other meanings which would then allow for Karac being the beloved "he" in this song, you have this:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Home of my heart, take me dancing,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Carry me still, sweet home of my heart,</em>
</p><p><em>Take me dancing, round and round.</em>” (*)</p><p> </p><p><em>"Round and round"</em>, like the cycle of the seasons. (I tell thee, when you find stuff (definitely the world) spinning, turning, going round and round in Robert’s love songs, 85% chance it’s about his Jimmy.)</p><p>So please, give up already. This is a <em>romantic</em> love song to a He/Him pronouns’ person, period. One more time: this is a<em> love song explicitly dedicated to a man.</em> Robert Plant is fucking bisexual, okay?? He didn't write a song to some god in the language of the mystics. He wrote a song in the language of the mystics so that he could use "he/him" pronouns in safe and comfortable ambiguity. People, indeed, decided he had turned to religion, even converted to Islam, because the alternative, to these people, is unthinkable. Literally, they've never thought about it as a real possibility, or they've tried very, very hard. Such is the power of denial, this is the weight of the Heteronormative Goggles we sometimes mention. Because it makes no sense that Robert would ask God to take him dancing, but they press on regardless: it can't be about Karac because it's romantic, therefore, it must be God himself.</p><p>They're not wrong. People call Jimmy a god every day and twice on Sundays, don't they? Amen.</p><p>Yes, of course it's about Jimmy. Like "When I Was A Child" is for Jimmy, like "Shining In The Light" is about Jimmy, and likely "Heart In Your Hands", "Upon A Golden Horse", and very possibly "Blue Train"* and maybe "Burning Up". (Dunno about "Please Read The Letter" or "House Of Love", haven't found any clues. It's out of my field.)</p><p> </p><p>*Yes, I know "Blue Train" is allegedly, "canonically" about Karac, but <em>"Light of my life, where have you gone/ Love's true flame dies, without the warmth of your sun./ ... I've been waiting on a corner / I've been waiting for a sign now"</em> ... I insist, this is a <em>romantic</em> song. We have flames and true love and we have signs and rains and suns and "carry my heart"... I mean:</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p></p><div class="ujudUb">
  <p>"<em>Here comes the blue train rollin'</em><br/><em>Across my heart it crawls</em><br/><em>The rain still pouring down</em><br/><em>Another day escapes me</em><br/><em>A little later maybe</em><br/><em>Love will roll around."</em></p>
</div><div class="ujudUb">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="ujudUb">
  <p>You've done Jimbert 101 now. Is this more like "I believe" or... literally any other romantic love song Robert has written?**</p>
</div><p> </p><p>So, back to WTWWY and male pronouns: the thing is, Robert could have written the song without the “he/him.” He could have just used “you.” It works, the meaning is complete without the male pronouns. But he <em>chooses</em> to use “he/him.” I daresay he writes the entire song in a way that makes it possible to do that without leaving him completely exposed. But why? Why not just spare himself the trouble altogether?</p><p>Same reason for all those “secrets” and “hidden” things which appear in so many of his songs since early Zeppelin. If you really want to keep a secret, you don’t keep advertising there is one to keep at all. Therefore...</p><p>From the forbidden affair in “What Is And Never Should Be” and the dream in “No Quarter” and “Achilles Last Stand,” from those torrid performances of “Since I’ve Been Loving You” on stage, from the days of “girly” blouses and horny voice/guitar interactions (or Theremin), from those “Whole Lotta Love” mike shenanigans, and all the other instances in which Robert has talked about his secret and his need to hide, or has expressed a desire for "freedom" to love, or has displayed sexual ambiguity in one way or another (and there are so many and so many types, we never quite manage to list them all)-- from the very beginning, and to this very day, Robert seems to feel an almost irrepressible impulse to come out, to show himself as he is, to tell the whole truth about whom he loves, whom he desires, whom he fucks. This manifests in his actions, his general behaviour and body language, and definitely in his words in lyrics and interviews. So, he bothers because it matters. It’s important to him.</p><p><em>It was important to him to write a love song with male pronouns. </em>How about that.</p><p>But, you might say, for all that need and that urge, he’s been coasting on this ambiguity; he's done quite a lot (no, really, quite a lot), to be fair to him, but he allows the ambiguity - hell, the sheer denial- to stand. He shouldn’t have to clarify anything, of course, but if he needs it so bad, why not just say it?</p><p>Well. For illustration: At the time of writing these lines, the Lil Nas X coming out situation is raging. He openly admits it’s taken him tremendous courage, and he’s currently under an almighty backlash from bigots and racists (usually the same people) on social media. Sure, he did it with a bang. Lap-dancing Satan is a little more flashy than sending a note to the press; had he done that, it might not have caused such a stir. But a stir it has caused, and the insults he gets are racist and homophobic. And he assumed there would be hell to pay and he feared it, and the outrage happened, and has hit him full-force, indeed. He’s admitted that it’s taking its toll. And this is a kid who’s grown in the coming out culture, with the courage of previous pioneers to soften the landing. We don’t live in Tolerantopia yet.</p><p>What if it was Robert Plant, rock legend, cultural icon, national treasure, putting a note in the press? (Lap-dancing Satan he's done, in a way. On a stage, regularly.) What do you think would happen? I can’t tell for sure, but I’m guessing he’s at an age where he can do without the fuss.</p><p>So, he doesn’t quite come out, but it wouldn’t be fair to say that he is closeted. He does not deny, and he does not hide, and<em> he never has</em>. People like me have figured it out. Hell, one look at him, alone or especially with Jimmy, and you think “very likely”. And then there are the lyrics to complete the picture, and never mind what he’s actually stated before cameras and microphones and recording devices. He's out of the closet, alright. How the hell is it his fault that people refuse to listen, refuse to see?</p><p>Not in the closet, not quite outside. Let’s say it’s like he has set up a tent on the porch, and there he lives his life. He sings love songs about his man and their Storybook Love, and he sings them loud, and if people happen to walk by and hear it, fine by him. He hung up a rainbow flag on that porch lately, have you seen it? Most people don’t, but it’s there. </p><p>On top of fear and precaution, there may be an actual vow of silence to Jimmy, which he mentions in “The Only One”  (“<em>I give my word, my lips are sealed</em>”). Maybe it goes as far back as the days of “The Rain Song” (<em>“Talk to me only with your eyes”</em>).</p><p>If it’s an actual vow or a manner of speaking, I don’t know. Doesn’t matter. What matters is, it's not just Robert’s secret to keep. if Robert ever said the magic words, all eyes would immediately turn to Jimmy. The uproar would catch him too. And Jimmy has already no homo’d out once (worse: it was a no-Robert. Jerk). He seems more reluctant to let the truth come out now than he did fifty years ago. He has a reputation to maintain, you see. Jimmy Page The Legend may be many things, but apparently he doesn’t want “queer” to be one of them.*</p><p> </p><p>(Though I shall grant him that: Led Zeppelin by Led Zeppelin has Jimbert all over the place, and the queer is there too. Again, you have to know what to look for, but it’s very, very much there, from the first version of the lyrics of “Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp” to the thirsty fish-eye photos of Robert, from the images he chooses to highlight from the cover of Physical Graffiti to the photos of their trips alone together. He doesn't advertise it with a flashy sign, but he has not tried to erase what they really were from the authorised account of the band's history which he micromanaged. His statement about the “misconstrued relationship” will always outweigh all those hints and signs and clues but still, I suppose what he did not leave out from the book counts for something.)</p><p>(Can you tell I'm not very happy with him in this regard.)<em><br/></em></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>BUT WE WERE "DOING" A SONG HERE I SEEM TO RECALL</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong> <em>In my dreams you've come to call</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>What an epic friendship!</p><p>No, seriously, bros don’t dream about their bros<em>. </em>And if they do, they usually don’t write songs about it. And if they should do that, we would all suspect maybe the “bro” thing should be revised.</p><p>“But it’s possible!” – you may want to argue. Sure. Everything is possible under the sun.</p><p>But not this time. Because… Haven’t you been paying attention to everything else we’ve been talking about here? Doesn’t it kind of pile up? Taking all of that into account, what is the most likely meaning of this, bromantic or romantic?</p><p>Listen, people are weird, but they’re not that weird. People write songs about dreaming of their belovedses, not their friends. Because das gay.</p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong> <em>You are my friend, you are my friend</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>  </strong>
</p><p>Leds appropriately reminds us that the relationship was kind of frazzled at the time, and that things had gotten positively ugly with the Coverdale Debacle. But Jimmy and Robert love each other very much, have had the best times together, have shared so much, and what I’m getting at is that this line could be trying to bring that up. That in spite of everything else, there is this. "We are Friends, remember, Jimmy?"</p><p> </p><p>But this line, I think, works very hard. Not double duty, triple at least: It talks to Jimmy --“In spite of our differences, I want you to know…”--. It talks to queer people --“this is a queer thing”-- and it talks to the Straights: “this is <em>not</em> a queer thing.” Clever, clever Robert.</p><p> </p><p>We mentioned before the different meanings of the word “friend” in queer code* and in straight language. Robert is not only playing with the ambiguity, he’s actively using it to cover his back: “He’s my friend” in Straight means “he is <em>not</em> my <em>boy</em>friend.” The one meaning precludes the other. What The Straights will derive from this is that using the term “friend” actually disproves the possibility of the other meaning, no matter how romantic the context. “Robert said they’re friends, therefore they don’t like each other That Way.” Weeeeell, has queer culture got news for you, Straight People!</p><p> </p><p>Robert reinforces the queer meaning, romantic and sexual, of "You are my friend" with the line that comes next.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>You touch my soul</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>That’s almost without a doubt (as much as I can be sure without actually having written the song myself) a quote from “Case of You” by Joni Mitchell and it means “I love you.” </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“I remember that time you told me you said</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Love is touching souls"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Surely you touched mine</em>
</p><p>
  <em>'Cause part of you pours out of me</em>
</p><p>
  <em>In these lines from time to time</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Oh, you're in my blood like holy wine</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You taste so bitter and so sweet.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Etc.</p><p>So I love you, not as a friend, a brother, a bandmate, a parental figure, a master, a cousin, a companion in Christ. “You touch my soul.” – I love you like the song says, as my lover ("Part of you pours out of me in these lines" -- I tell you about my love in my lyrics. The shoe fits very comfortably.)</p><p>Could it be… <em>not</em> a quote of this song? Could Robert just mean “you touch my soul” as in “you move me, you get to me”? Sure. Jimmy does that too.</p><p>However: Do we know that Robert and Jimmy know well and like Joni Mitchell’s music? Yes, they absolutely adored her. Would someone who knew the song “Case of You” hear “you touch my soul” and connect it to the song? From 1970 when the song was written, very likely, yes, wethinks. </p><p>Robert Plant thinks very, very carefully what he puts in his lyrics, and what he doesn’t put in them. He’s very aware of what he’s saying at every turn. Because Robert Plant writes in code.*</p><p>*Remember when I used to allow for the opposite? When I considered that, like any poet, he would use the images and metaphors that spontaneously come to him, because it’s his poetic language, and so a lot of this stuff would just “happen”? Well, now I believe this is true for 20% of his lyrics at most, a proportion that decreases as time goes by. </p><p><em>Lullaby and the ceaseless roar</em> (2014) is an exercise in self-referencing, full of direct quotes to his own lyrics from Zeppelin days, a conversation between current day, old man Robert and his younger self, a reckoning, if you will. And a compendium. It tells you the self-referencing is conscious, not random or gratuitous, and that it means something. It’s obvious when you look into his lyrics up close, but he’s also said it himself (most recently, concerning his podcast “Digging deep” - the very title is an indication and an invitation.) (I find he doesn’t dig very deep at all, which is also highly suggestive. I guess he wants us to put in the work.)</p><p><em>Carry Fire</em> (2017) is a festival of Jimbert references and symbols, an anthology. It gives you the final, complete form of those symbols so you can go find it where it first appeared, and follow its evolution thereafter. It gives you a bunch of silver keys to unlock the Jimbert throughout his entire work. </p><p> </p><p>When you can’t say things outright, you find other ways. Queer people are very used to thinking through what's going to come out of his mouth, and how. What people don't say is as significant as what they do say. Leds attests to that. "That's why queer people make such good wordsmiths."</p><p> </p><p>Robert and Jimmy have created an entire metaphoric language to communicate right under the noses of the entire world. Poets expose their hearts and their innermost feelings in their art, but this is different, because the poet, the lover in this is Robert Plant, and his beloved is Jimmy fucking Page, and their baby is Led Zeppelin, and they have told us all about it, and hell, it’s kind of a big deal. It's so <em>exciting</em>.</p><p>Hey, Zepheads, remember what I said: All your favourite songs are gay. </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong> <em>You touch my soul</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Hello, hello, hello</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Hello, hello, hello”</em> </strong>
</p><p> </p><p>You say hello to someone who wasn’t there and now is. You’ve just met them, or they have returned. You’d say hello to someone who’s been away and comes back to you. I think it’s kind of an invitation in this case, or a wishful expression.</p><p> </p><p>And then there’s this little nothing in the coda:</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong> <em>Strange, so very strange</em> </strong>
</p><p> </p><p>Why is that so important? - “The Only One” (1988):</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“It's just to some extent you linger on and on again, on again, on again</em>
</p><p><em>It's very strange - it's very strange</em>”</p><p> </p><p>I am NOT getting into “The Only One”, because we could be here a while. Suffice to say it’s possibly <em>the</em> most illuminating Jimbert song of them all: it’s self-aware, it illustrates their dynamic, it’s a confession, and it’s candid and perfectly straight(heh)forward. Have a look yourself. I’ll deal with it in depth some other time.</p><p> “The Only One” is unequivocally, unambiguously, a love song, and it’s for Jimmy Page. Perhaps you care to have a quick look at a couple of Easter Eggs Robert planted here and there to make sure that much was clear:</p><p><em>“Talk talk talk talk”</em> – That’s from “The Rain Song.” A direct quote. Remember? "<em>Talk to me only with your eyes, talk talk talk </em>talk.” Love me love me love me love me.</p><p>"<em>Turning turning, turning turning"</em> -- the seasons. The symbol we find referenced fully ("seasons turn") in "A Way With Words", from <em>Carry Fire, </em>which is what took us to "The Rain Song" in the first place. We made the case for TRS being a Jimbert song elsewhere. We took some time about it. Have a read if you like.</p><p> </p><p>The Jimbert in "The Only One" is not only in the lyrics: it’s in the music too, (I wish I could verbalise that coherently), and it’s in the performance: it’s one of Robert’s horniest vocals since “Whole Lotta Love.”</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Oh, oooh, hnnng, gaaah, - honey, it fits</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Baby, it's all it ever really was</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Talk, talk, talk, talk - talk, talk, talk, talk”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“<span class="u">What is it about you that I feel inside</span> but* I can't explain?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Ooohh, oh</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Mmmmm, what is it about you that I feel <strong>inside</strong> that* <span class="u">I can't explain*?</span>”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>I mean, <em>dude</em>. I mean, <em>bro</em>. I mean, yikes! “<em>Talk, talk, talk, talk”</em> in “The Rain Song” means “Love me Love me Love me Love me". As in “Whole Lotta Love me”.</p><p> </p><p>*Ooooh Leds, you GENIUS! This line, and this slight alteration, is doing double-duty! Think about it. We’ll look into it when we do “The Only One.” </p><p>
  
</p><p>So this line which Robert throws seemingly carelessly in the coda, <em>“strange, so very strange”</em>, connects with <em>“It's just to some extent you linger on and on again, on again, on again /</em> <em>It's very strange - it's very strange</em>” in “The Only One”, which Robert wrote for Jimmy, as a gift and a vow which reveals itself more and more true as the years go by.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>OOF, that was hard work. But fun. But hard work.</p><p>I thought this would be short and sweet, because it was a relatively simple, self-contained song with few references. How wrong can you get. 9k words wrong!</p><p> </p><p>"I love you, Jimmy, and I keep thinking about you."</p><p> </p><p>Memory Song is for hard-working dummies, that's for sure.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Drop us a "yallah" or just an "I read this", pls, we get lonely! And of course, any thoughts, info, and contribution of any sort are more than welcome. It takes a village, folkses!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. A Way With Words, and all those other songs</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Keep It Hid, A Way With Words, Heaven Sent, as well as some others here and there.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This one has been written entirely by mary_anjel. Goldragon/Thebookhunter provided the "oooooh!" and "ahaaaaa!" and the "OMG SO TRUE!!" and that's all.</p><p>***<br/>mary_anjel (aka imoldgreggory): </p><p>Well, that is not entirely true - thebookhunter is being modest:) After the first draft was ready, we had some incredibly illuminating discussions, which added another thousand words or so to the final essay. The result of those you can see below, I did my best to acknowledge Fishie's contributions whenever citing her or including the results of our brainstorming. Thank you so much for making this whole thing as productive and fun as humanly possible &lt;3</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Disclaimer: I haven’t read the rest of the song analyses done by my esteemed colleagues in the fandom yet (I know! I will), but I’m reasonably sure I understand what’s what on my own. I also haven’t listened to Robert’s podcast about songs on Carry Fire, nor do I intend to do it. I heard exactly one episode last year and it became clear the man will not explain a single thing about his lyrics to us. Well, if he won’t do it himself, I guess someone else has to :)</p><p>Warning: literary terms used quite loosely. It’s been a long time since uni and I don’t really have the motivation to double-check all that stuff.</p><p> </p><p>RP’s <em> Carry Fire </em> is full of threads, they run between the songs on the album, but also reach beyond (“across the days, across the years”, as it were) to the LZ catalogue, Page and Plant era, and Robert’s solo career. Not every single one, but most of them do - those that are all addressed to one person.</p><p><em> Carry Fire </em> , in essence, is an open letter. Literally, because it’s out there in the open, for all to hear; but also because Robert is being very open emotionally, perhaps more so than usual - instead of his habitual riddles where everything is true and untrue at the same time, here he seems to say to hell with all the games, it’s time to get real and speak more plainly. He is opening up with a purpose, and to a particular addressee (“I’ll bare my heart to you, if you will understand”). I say it is a letter because it is addressed to a real someone, and - rule number one of communication theory - the message was designed to be understood by this someone and elicit a response from them. But also it’s a letter because, honestly, take all the JP songs on the album, rewrite the lyrics in prose, and you’ll get the goddamn <em> De Profundis </em>. Think about it.</p><p>These two points are important to understand before attempting any lyrics analysis. Each song is to be looked at in context, and this context is very concrete and deducible - it had been carefully laid out over five decades or so.</p><p>Now, all shippers like to read into things, but we are honestly not even shippers - we just analyse what we hear. Any conclusions drawn here can be phrased so that they would involve a nameless addressee, and absolutely nothing would change - the meanings and the connections will still be there. I will just be calling the addressee Jimmy, for the sake of convenience. As for reading into things, well, Robert left all these clues in his songs precisely for someone to find them; that’s what poets do, encode meanings in beautiful words. Also, he urged us to “dig deep”, so somebody has to. Before we start, all the lyrics are taken from the album’s official booklet, as unofficial sources tend to hear certain parts differently: <a href="https://www.discogs.com/Robert-Plant-Carry-Fire/master/1251488"> https://www.discogs.com/Robert-Plant-Carry-Fire/master/1251488 </a> (click on “More images”). It seems rather significant that the complete lyrics have been published. Makes you think Robert wanted to highlight the importance of the textual component of Carry Fire - the album is not just a bunch of songs and melodies, they are not just to be enjoyed as pieces of music (even though that too, of course) - it's a text as well, and its message is important. (It is customary to send letters in written form after all.)</p><p>Out of the 11 songs on the album, 6 are Jimbert songs: "The May Queen", "Dance with You Tonight", "A Way with Words", "Carry Fire", "Keep It Hid", and "Heaven Sent". In this essay (lmao), I will touch upon some of the less discussed ones: mostly focusing on AWWW as it’s the most intriguing one of the lot (yes, it’s not as plain as it seems), but inevitably examining some others along the way, AWWW being filled to the brim with references as it is. For some reason, I conclude with “Heaven Sent” - which I tried <em> not </em> to write about but failed, so here we go. But first, a few words about the cryptic one: “Keep It Hid”.</p><p>I love the title “<b>Keep It Hid</b> ” because it’s quite meta in that it comments on the song itself (much like AWWW, of which more below). A clever play and an explanation why the lyrics are so hard to see through: it announces straight away that there is a big secret and proceeds to talk about it (to its addressee), but by being cryptic, the song continues to “keep it hid”, true to Robert’s word. This song, precisely <em> because </em> it’s so damn cryptic and pretty much impossible to interpret confidently, gives me carte blanche to run wild and speculate away. It is, no doubt, a JP song though, it’s just really hard to decipher the metaphors, so I simply have fun assuming <em> all </em>of it has to do with Jimmy - which might be wildly off the mark, but we’ll never know.</p><p>Some things I’ve already commented on elsewhere (like the refrain “silver key and a golden cup” being an extremely fitting metaphor for JP and RP - even just the colours are already telling. Moreover, key and cup are most symbolic spiritually in the broadest sense. Cup symbolising the feminine energy of the universe (or more literally, a womb), key symbolising mystery, initiation, knowledge, opening and closing powers. This refrain is of special importance in the song, because, well, it’s a refrain - a repeated line that is decidedly <em> not </em> random or abstract. Also, have you seen that photo of them, with the key? from that 90s photoshoot stuffed with symbolic imagery??), and some details are pretty self explanatory (like in verse 1 “And who you gonna ‘rock’ when your man has gone?” where we have ‘rock’ in inverted commas). </p><p>It’s also obviously linked to other JP songs from the album and beyond. E.g. the lyrics “Who you gonna call when the day is done?” clearly echo the 1993 ‘Oh Jimmeh’ song “Calling to You” (“Who you gonna call? What you gonna say? / Standin' in the shadows as the world's just fadin' away”).</p><p>In verse 1 in general, the main message is “time is running out” - same as in DWYT (“It's the last chance our hearts will dance”) and also in Heaven Sent (“Now shadows fall, the hour is late / ...but time won’t wait”), “The May Queen” (“The dimming of my light”), and mayyyybeee touched upon in “Carry Fire” (“All through the <em> gathering years </em> / Beyond these lonely ways””). AWWW is a bit different, and talks about the same thing not quite as directly (line 1, about which more below). Basically, this theme is present in all six JP songs on the album, acting as a cohesive device to further join the parts together into one coherent text.</p><p>I’m going to repeat the obvious and once again say that the main message of the entire song - “keep it hid” - is of course echoed in “Carry Fire” (“so long ago and <em> out of sight </em>”), as well as a number of earlier Jimbert songs: JP’s “The Only One” (“my lips are sealed”), Wonderful One (“You can never, never let it show”), “Achilles’ Last Stand” (“the dream hides inside and never seen”). This is the big secret the song talks about. Robert helpfully shed some light on it himself in an interview:</p><p>
  <em> “Everything that I’ve got between my ears, or between my legs, is my business and nobody else’s. So I keep it hid. One of the tracks off my last record [2017’s Carry Fire] is about just that – Keep It Hid. And that’s what you have to do.” </em>
</p><p>Btw, the bit about “between my legs” was all Robert - completely unprompted by the question (which was simply “What prompted you to do the podcast?” - at that Robert started talking about why he’d never write a book, and we got a glimpse of how Robert’s mind works, apparently). Now, I wonder what kind of relationship would warrant such caution and secrecy on the part of a man who in his life has openly dated and had children with two actual sisters, ffs? Anyways.</p><p>Verses 2 and 3 is where the song gets really interesting (and really, really weird). Who is the girl by the sea? What’s up with “mamma” and “let me be your kid”? Well. Since it’s impossible to be certain, I will follow Robert’s advice and keep my private delusions to myself, sparing those who might read this essay. At the same time, certain things I think bear looking at a bit more closely.</p><p>I mean, for instance take the lyric “baby take the wine from the loving cup”. The “loving cup”, really? I think we’ve already seen a “golden cup” mentioned in the same song - these two dots simply demand to be connected. </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>          Baby takes her time, likes to walk by the sea </em>
</p><p>
  <em>           She’s got some trouble in mind, life in a minor key </em>
</p><p>Okay, so one thing I can say for sure: Robert’s “baby” is <em> a musician </em>(‘minor key’ being a music term), which is certainly interesting. “Life in a minor key” here indicates some kind of unhappiness, dissatisfaction (by association with the minor scale in music, which tends to produce a sad or pensive effect). I’m basing this interpretation on this particular meaning on the word ‘minor’ specifically, as opposed to its broader, everyday usage, because I don’t believe for a second that the musical reference is random or coincidental. </p><p>Fishie says there is another, alternative reading that doesn’t negate the first one, and I agree it’s a possibility (plus, who doesn’t love it when a line or a phrase contains multiple meanings at once? I know I do). In this case, we take the primary, most widely used definition of ‘minor’ - not the strictly musical sense. “Life in a minor key” would then mean a duller, more ordinary life. If we applied it to JP’s current situation in real life (we gave ourselves permission to see Jimmy in every line of this, remember?), then it would literally mean being decently paired with a poet girlfriend and remastering old stuff and collecting awards and reliving old glories, when he could/ should be soaring, aiming higher, making music, living, with Robert. </p><p>Now, I absolutely do not care that “baby” here is nominally a she. This is all poetic language, and I’ve already given myself permission to look at the whole song through my Jimbert goggles. So, with that in mind, baby - who is a musician - is unhappy/”got some trouble in mind”. Why? Because of something RP did - we see this situation mentioned in Carry Fire (“Just like I scarred you”) and AWWW (quite subtly hinted at - see the analysis down below). </p><p>Hurt by RP, she isn’t rushing back to him: “baby takes her time”. There’s a vague sense of urgency in this lyric: she “takes her time”, almost as if she’s taking too long for RP’s liking. Why? Because, as we’ve established, the time is running out. However, RP is prepared to wait (about which more below, in the AWWW section).</p><p>Lastly, I was going to link here what other Jimbert(-adjacent, lol) songs also mention <em> the sea </em> (e.g. Calling to You, Shining In the Light), BUT I think a better approach here is to simply look at the motif of ‘the sea’ in Robert’s poetic language as a whole and see how it sheds more light on this particular song. </p><p>On the 1993 album Fate Of Nations, Robert has a song called “Down to the sea” (the album itself is also quite Jimbert-y but that’s beside the point right now). The song itself is not necessarily a Jimbert song, or at least I would prefer not to get into that reading of it right now - that’s a different story for a different time. Our focus here is different. What we can take away from the song is that “the sea” is “where it all comes around”, it’s where all the “friendships and small ships and hardships and dreams” are. What else does Robert tell us about it? “All of the tears and the laughter and dreams / Movin' before me, waves and the ocean and sea”. Clearly, “the sea” is a metaphor for “life” - the past life and memories and experience that an individual has had. So when Robert sings “This is my wisdom, these are just words from the sea”, he really just means he is sharing what he’s learned in life.</p><p>Now, back to Keep It Hid. Baby “likes to walk by the sea” literally means that this person passes their time going down memory lane, enjoys living in the past. Sound like anyone we know? Anyone at all? </p><p>If somebody were to ask me why I believe this song is about Jimmy Page when it’s clearly about a woman/she/momma/baby, etc… this is why. I rest my case.</p><p>Moving on.</p><p><b>A Way With Words</b> is cryptic in a different way. This song is beautiful beyond words and so very powerful - it made me cry on the very first listen and left me unable to do anything else for the remainder of the evening except sit there and play the album again and again; it’s still my favourite song on the album and I still have trouble breathing whenever it plays. Anyways, the point is, it is also undoubtedly about and for Jimmy.</p><p>AWWW genuinely puzzled me, and it wouldn’t leave me in peace for eight months before I gave up and sat down to analyse it. It’s puzzling because, on the one hand, it’s quite plainly phrased and the message is clear - but on the other hand, this one song has so many layers, so many threads leading <em> everywhere </em>. Sure, you get the main idea right away, but do you really get everything the song has to offer? I know I didn’t. Each time it left me with even more questions.</p><p>Take the title, for example. Why is it called “A Way With Words”? <em> Why? </em> All the other songs have bits of lyrics as their titles but not this one. The connection of the title to the song is not immediately obvious (it took me literal months of carrying these questions around with me to arrive at an answer, but idk maybe I’m just slow). I mean the title can’t be random - with Robert, <em> nothing </em> is <em> ever </em> random. Plus, it’s part of the “open letter” I mentioned earlier, so it must be decipherable in some way that would connect to Jimmy. You may say, “but Robert is a poet, a wordsmith, weaving words together is his job - so there you go, here’s your meaning, it’s quite simple”. True, but again, why give such a title <em> to this particular song </em>? There has to be something else. </p><p>The title of a work will, typically, sum up its core message or offer a hint as to this message. More often than not, it is self-explanatory. Well, apparently not in this case. It’s Robert Plant we’re talking about after all. I will give my interpretation of the title a bit later (all will be revealed), but first we need to take a closer look at the connections AWWW has with other songs from Robert’s Jimbert catalogue - the song can be dissected, literally, line by line. Some of the references are more obvious than others but I’m still going to list them for science, bear with me. I’ll try and be brief.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>          Leave me here alone for just as long as it takes </em>
</p><p>(Carry Fire: “I sit and wait for you like so many others do” - obviously. I mean it is literally the next song on the album - a direct continuation of AWWW. </p><p>Also, Keep It Hid: “Baby <em> takes her time </em> / Likes to walk by the sea”.</p><p>But there’s more. This line is interesting because it connects to other songs through opposition. Here he says to the addressee, take all the time you need, I’m not in a hurry. But in other songs:</p><p>DWYT: “And if there’s one more time… / Maybe the last chance our hearts will dance… / ...your late, late smile”</p><p>Keep It Hid: “And who you gonna call when the day is done? / ...when your man has gone? / etc.” -  the whole of verse 1 really.</p><p>Heaven Sent: “Now shadows fall, the hour is late / Still hear your song but time won’t wait”</p><p>The May Queen: “I linger in the shadow / The dimming of my light”.</p><p>Can you sense a theme here? Old age, time running out - RP was obviously thinking a lot about it at the time, in an interview he also spoke about wanting to go to Morocco with Jimmy again “before the end”. So in truth, Robert <em> is </em> in a hurry ("let me dance with you <em>tonight</em>") - but he opens AWWW with a line like this. It gives me SO MANY thoughts and feels, you don’t even know… </p><p>I’m not even commenting on the “alone” - for now, don’t think I missed it.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>           The seasons turn </em>
</p><p>
  <em>           Waiting for the weather to break </em>
</p><p>(The Rain Song: I’m not even quoting, it’s literally the entire song - a separate essay’s worth of material to comment on. Seasons of emotion and all that. You remember.</p><p>Another possibility, The Only One: “Turning, turning - turning, turning”. Cycles, circularity and repeating patterns are a recurring theme in Roberts lyrics.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>           Loving up a storm now </em>
</p><p>(Now, I can English quite well but I’m not a native, and this phrasing, while clear, still looks weird to me. At first I thought okay, ‘love’ and ‘storm’ are obviously the keywords here, so… maybe “seasons of emotion” again? But also stormy weather, maybe The May Queen: “Inside my waves are breaking / Oh light of my salvation” etc etc… Could be, but till, I wasn’t too convinced.</p><p>Then I realised this is likely a reference to the song “Lovin Up a Storm” by Jerry Lee Lewis, and it made more sense. I was surprised to find out that in 1968 Jimmy Page, together with John Paul Jones and other brilliant session musicians, made an album called<em> No Introduction Necessary </em>, featuring a cover of this song. Just a random bit of info, I suppose. Or is it?)</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>           Many times I fell from grace </em>
</p><p>(Heaven Sent: “A stolen kiss, a fall from grace” - it’s an obvious one. But what do they both mean? I kept struggling to make sense of this bit in relation to Robert - until my dear colleague Fishie wonderfully put it in simple words for me, which I repeat here verbatim: to be in someone's good graces means this person likes you, esteems you, thinks well of you. To fall from grace means to lose that esteem. Jimmy being an angel, the grace thing belongs very nicely. Angels fall too, they are expelled from paradise. So the general idea, I think, is "I was in paradise when you thought well of me and I was cast out when I lost your affection/my place in your good graces, your consideration as a good one. Basically, I pissed you off, and we are not friends now, and it's like purgatory, and I want to be back in paradise where we are friends and I can love you and you let me.” </p><p>As such, the lyrics in both cases would refer to RP and JP’s ups and downs. The latest and most final, refusing to tour after Celebration Day, stealing from Jimmy the last chance to feel alive and play the music of his life to roaring crowds. Robert decides he won’t sacrifice anything (more) to give that to Jimmy, and Jimmy decides that it’s definitely over -  since it has to be all or nothing (music+love or no love, no relationship rather.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>           Once again our world will shake  </em>
</p><p>(DWYT: “We shared a world forever changing”.</p><p>Possibly When The World Was Young: “I saw him, I knew him, I touched him / When the world was young” - but I do believe that in AWWW the emphasis is more on “<em> our </em>”.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>           Reaching out to find you </em>
</p><p>(Calling to You: “Callin’ to you, callin’ to you, callin’ to you / Oh Jimmy”</p><p>Memory Song: “Oh my friend, sense you now”</p><p>Carry Fire: “I’m reaching out to you across the broken days”)</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>           I’ll put it all behind you </em>
</p><p>(No reference here. However, this song, and the album in general, very subtly serves me the ‘soulmate’ vibe. In DWYT: “Dance with me baby / Make me feel alright” - implying that the addressee is the only one (hah) who can make him feel <em> alright </em>. I like the word choice here too - not ‘good’ or ‘alive’ or something else stronger, but a simple ‘alright’ - without this person, something feels off for Robert. </p><p>Another example, AWWW: “Leave me here <em> alone </em>” - implying that there are no other possible options but the addressee, and his absence is felt by the singer; implying, even, that the state of separation is unnatural for them, it requires a conscious decision and/or action on someone’s part - hence “leave me”. </p><p>Now, this line here - “I’ll put it all behind you” - is a promise, and it implies lots of things at once. First, that the addressee is in some kind of emotional turmoil (see also Keep It Hid: “She’s got some trouble in mind / Life in a minor key” - yes, ‘she’, and no, it doesn’t bother me, in fact you don’t even know the extent to which it doesn’t bother me) because someone, likely RP, has hurt them (hello Carry Fire: “Just like I scarred you”). Second, RP has the power to affect the addressee this strongly and he knows it. Third, RP is confident in his ability to “put it all behind you”, in fact, it sounds like he is the only one who would be able to. I mean, this is the standard soulmate!au trope where the only thing that can save a character from pain is their soulmate's physical presence, lol.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>           I’m back again </em>
</p><p>(Coming and going, repetition, cycles - that is a theme in Robert’s work. You remember The Rain Song: “These are the seasons of emotion / and like the wind they rise and fall”. And then in The Only One we also have things “turning turning”, and there we kind of see the reverse of this “I’m back again” line: “Well I can't sit still but you know that I'm moving again”. But in the end both songs talk about the same thing. Also, in When the World Was Young we hear: "Oh oh, I'm here and then / Go round and round and back again".)</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>           I know </em>
</p><p>(A refrain - especially important, because it is repeated so often. This “I know” is all at once an acknowledgement of Robert’s nature that never could “sit still” but keeps coming and going, an acknowledgement that for Jimmy this is precisely the problem, and an apology.</p><p>In a stroke of genius, Fishie proposed another possible thread, leading to the song “Amelia” by Joni Mitchell, about which Robert said “This is the story of my life”. This one, too, makes an awful lot of sense when seen through our magical Jimbert goggles. The song has the lyrics: “I wish that he was here tonight / It's so hard to obey / His sad request of me to kindly stay away”, and if we assume that Robert identifies with the singer and has himself been asked “to kindly stay away”, then the refrain of AWWW - “I’m back again / I know” - can be read as a kind of response to that.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>           Coming from the cold </em>
</p><p>
  <em>           Reaching for your sweet embrace </em>
</p><p>(Keep It Hid: “What you gonna do when it’s cold outside? / And who’ll keep you warm when the sun won’t shine?”</p><p>Possibly The Rain Song: “So little warmth I’ve felt before / … / I Felt the coldness of my winter”.</p><p>Also let’s not forget that interview where RP said he and Jimmy didn’t hug often enough.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>           The seasons turn </em>
</p><p>
  <em>           Out beyond your world I’ll wait </em>
</p><p>(“Your” is the word here. For the singer, there is “our world”, and then there is the world of the addressee, which RP cannot/doesn’t want to access. For me, it brings to mind the lyrics from Carry Fire: “I was a stranger there / Inside your promised land”, although I won’t insist there is a link.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>           Is your heart still warm? </em>
</p><p>
  <em>           A little flame, a special place </em>
</p><p>(DWYT: “The little light that keeps on shining / … / The road is long, the flame is bright / … / I offered up the secret places / … / The flame still burning bright across the days, across the years”)</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>           All we built is falling down </em>
</p><p>
  <em>           All we knew has hit the ground </em>
</p><p>(DWYT: “Till time conspired to steal our crown”</p><p>Memory Song: “Remain divided, we had our day”</p><p>Heaven Sent: “His empire falls, his spell will break” - god, don’t even get me started on Heaven Sent...)</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>           Blame and tears, the lonesome sound </em>
</p><p>(Heaven Sent: “Spend the time forgiving / Never really done”</p><p>Calling to You: “Who stole the keys to the gates of the castle of love?”.</p><p>You’ll say it’s far-fetched. I’ll say I’m so far gone I’ve grown a third eye that sees these connections clear as anything. I’m literally omitting minor comments throughout this essay to prevent it from becoming too much.</p><p>Notice the word “<em> sound </em>” here - there is a musical dimension to this loneliness. Just like there always was a musical dimension to their togetherness.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>           Hopes and fears that burned the ground </em>
</p><p>
  <em>           I know </em>
</p><p>(“Hopes and fears”, huh? If you are so inclined, you can certainly hear an echo of ALS here: “Oh to touch the dream, hides inside and never seen” - and by extension, <em> allllll </em> the rest of the songs featuring the same motif. Although technically, I don’t think ‘hopes’ and ‘dreams’ are exactly the same. Fishie agrees they are not the same and suggests that in this case, “hopes and fears” likely means the stuff they've had to deal with since they broke up as Page and Plant, and worse, after Celebration Day. This way, the second half of the line (“that burned the ground”) also makes more sense: Jimmy never wanted any of that to be over, so, and I quote, “shattered hopes, and the tears result from that. They've burnt their fields and no clover grows there anymore…”</p><p>Alternatively - or additionally - I think the last part of Heaven Sent can be heard as a response to this bit in AWWW. ‘I know you are afraid to hope but…’ “All that's worth the doing / Is seldom easy done / All that's worth the winning / Is never easy won”)</p><p>Like I said before, circularity and repetition is a big theme in AWWW, so it is hardly surprising that it echoes so many other different songs. Moreover, I believe that it was <em> intended </em> to be heard as an intertext, written with this in mind. And now, in this light, the title “A Way With Words” finally starts to make sense to me. In AWWW, Robert is consciously invoking a considerable number of other Jimbert songs (I haven’t counted but I’m sure it’s unsurpassed) - not directly quoting but hinting, just subtly enough. Robert Plant is not just good at putting words together - he is a <em> master </em>. And he knows it too, acknowledges it right in the title. Very meta. </p><p>To put it another way, throughout his long career, the entirety of which he spent either side by side with Jimmy, making music and sharing “dancing days and wondrous nights” but having to always “keep it hid” - or he spent it apart from Jimmy, writing songs about and/or to him. So, over the five decades Robert had written so much about it, about <em> them </em> , in his hiding-in-plain-sight kind of way, that he basically <em> invented a poetic language </em> inside his normal poetic language, dedicated solely to this. And by that point, by 2017, it had become so developed, established, extensive and coherent, that he could write a song consisting entirely of hints and references to other songs and certain themes/motifs. A song that, at the same time, would still be comprehensible to the addressee on all levels (I called the album a “letter” - and the goal of any message is to be understood)  - because said addressee has been there since this language first started to take shape, and he would have no problem reading it. </p><p>And <em> this </em>is why the song is called “A Way With Words” - because it really showcases what Fishie has dubbed ‘the Jimbert code’, the same way Robert has been encoding their story into his lyrics throughout the decades, only concentrated. A song dedicated entirely to ‘the Jimbert code’ and Robert’s mastery at it, but which also makes sense if read as a normal love song. </p><p>There’s <em> layers </em>to this title. </p><p>For instance, Fishie has proposed that "<em> A way </em> with words" could also be understood literally, as "a path" - a path towards the addressee that RP lays with his words, secure in the knowledge that it will be seen and recognised for what it is. This way, the title “A Way With Words” is also code - a way of saying "I've won you with my words before" (and all the links and references inside the song are reminders of exactly that).</p><p>I hope I have managed to explain why I think this seemingly straightforward song is in fact one of the trickiest and most fascinating on the album.</p><p> </p><p>I mentioned <b>Heaven Sent</b> above, and since I'm already on a roll, I thought why not do a quick analysis of this one as well. Because it certainly is, at least to my ear, absolutely a Jimbert song, full of references. </p><p>I've already talked about the very last part (“All that's worth the doing… spend the time forgiving, never really done”) which is a plea to Jimmy, a last attempt to get through to him - at least on this album. Now let's see what other references are there.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> There's an angel at the gate / … / He's heaven sent </em>
</p><p>(I know for a fact I'm not the only one who hears in this line echoes to: </p><p>When I Was a Child: "I slept at Heaven's gate", and</p><p>When the World Was Young "The messenger will hold the key" - both from Walking into Clarksdale, 1998. I might be forgetting some others too. </p><p>In Robert's lyrics through the years there's definitely this image of Jimmy as some sort of heavenly bringer of wisdom who opened the door ("the gate") to a new world for young Robert and whom Robert always looked up to ("When I was a child, I held you in my dreams" and all that). This image is sometimes of an angel like here in HS, other times of, supposedly, a god, like in WTWWY, but what I find interesting is how for Robert, it feels like he was never beyond reach - that's not a mortal admiring a deity from the ground. They were always equals, both mythical and eternal from the very beginning  ("I've been here since all time began / I saw him, I knew him, I touched him when the world was young" - <em> touched </em> meaning literally <em> was able to reach, </em> among other things; or When I Was a Child gives us a location -  "I slept at Heaven's gate" - which is also quite close to that higher plane, even back when Robert "was a child". Later on, this image of Jimmy stays with Robert as he grows up and reaches his full potential. It doesn't go away even as their relationship becomes more intimate - e.g. in WTWWY, along with all that about a vaguely godlike entity, we also hear: "High on a hill, home of my heart take me dancing", which one can interpret as them both being up above the rest of the world together. Additionally, "home of my heart" echoes Heart in Your Hand from the same album, and the "dancing" bit takes us back to Carry Fire and to DWYT, but this is perhaps not the place to go further into that.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Once heaven sent above the world </em>
</p><p>
  <em> The eagle and the dove </em>
</p><p>(A direct continuation of my thought from the previous paragraph. A long time ago, they were both flying high above the mortal world - together, as equals. Who is the eagle and who is the dove in this metaphor? I will leave it for you to interpret. In form, at least to my mind, this seems to echo another metaphor where Robert names two objects of the same caliber but that are essentially different: “Silver key and a golden cup” from Keep It Hid.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Singing / singing out </em>
</p><p>(This lyric I especially like because I'm convinced that ‘singing’, ‘song’ etc.in the Jimbert context can be read as code for love or their feelings for each other in any sense (‘dancing’ too, but I’ll focus on ‘singing’ here). With Jimbert, you can never really separate emotional life from music and I don't think it requires any further explanation. </p><p>Further in HS we also hear: "Once cast aside, his <em> song </em> awakes". Could it be about music? Anything is possible, but in the context of Carry Fire we are at the same time talking about Robert missing Jimmy on a very personal level and wanting him back after “falling from his grace”, so to speak, so I stand by my interpretation.</p><p>At the end of HS, what are "all the goodbye songs" Robert is singing about? We've heard all their songs after all and there don’t seem to be a lot of "goodbye songs" really. This is not <em> literally </em> about <em> songs </em> but rather about the times they’ve parted ways - "songs" being a metaphor again.</p><p>A bit earlier in the same song: "Still hear your song but time won't wait”. The thing about the time running out I’ve discussed above, but here it helps to interpret the first part of the line, which is our real focus. “Still hear your song”, simply put, really means “I still have feelings for you”. Why? Because the addressee “feeds the flame of everlasting love” - as we learn towards the beginning of HS.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> He feeds the flame of everlasting love </em>
</p><p>(See ‘flame’ discussed in the AWW section above. To add to that, this line here signals unequivocally that this is a song about romantic love - sung to a ‘he’, no less. I do not believe that Robert is singing about himself - as I’ve heard some interviewer ask Robert once - because of the second verse. If anyone had an “empire” back in the heyday and was casting “spells”, it was not Robert but Jimmy.)</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> A stolen kiss a fall from from grace </em>
</p><p>(See “a fall from grace” discussed in the AWWW section above.</p><p>NOW. What do you know, Robert has a whole separate song called “A Stolen Kiss”, on the 2014 album <em> Lullaby and… The Ceaseless Roar </em> - an album which intrigues me immensely and which I really need to give a proper listen to some time soon. I am far from great at dates and biographical facts, but I’m pretty sure the album was released just after RP broke up with Patti Griffin - this fact is surely to be kept in mind because context is important. But also it’s the same album that includes the song “Rainbow” about “the colours of [Robert’s] love”, so who knows, really.</p><p>I’m telling you now when I first listened to “A Stolen Kiss” (today), I heard <em> so many </em> things that my heart literally started hammering, lol. I know I need to be extra careful not to get carried away with finding links (here’s your disclaimer: anything I say below is based on a lack of any research and could potentially be refuted). Still, I’ll give you a quick rundown, since we’re already here:</p>
<ul>
<li>“How long has it been like this / Lost and found and lost yet again” - Circularity, repetition.</li>
<li>“Here in the heat of a stolen kiss / I make my home” - Romantic love as his “home” is not a new motif in Robert’s songs - the first example that comes to mind is of course “Home of my heart take me dancing” from Clarksdale, but also those songs where the singer is lost at sea (=life) and his only shore/island/”loving ground” is his lover (“Shining in the Light”, “Ship of Fools”, possibly even The May Queen with its “Inside my waves are breaking / Oh light of my salvation”, where the light might be that of a metaphorical lighthouse idk. And I’m sure there’s more instances I’m forgetting).</li>
<li>“On and on as the days slip away” - Old age and time running out - we’ve been over this. “On and on” indicating repetition again, or some extremely long-lasting thing (given the previous line, presumably a love).</li>
<li>“Oh lost in language oh lost in song” - Very intriguing, we have “song” again, which I’m sure doubles as a metaphor (see above); further in the song we also hear, “The song that never dies” which, to me, sounds an awful lot like “A love that never dies” from The May Queen. And I don’t know about you, but “lost in language” immediately makes me think of “a way with words” - in all of the senses theorised above.</li>
<li>“I'm gone” - A refrain. You already guessed it: this one echoes the refrain from AWWW: “I’m back again”.</li>
</ul><p>And that’s only the first two verses. I’ll stop here for now, I’m sure you get the idea. What <em> exactly </em> this “stolen kiss” means is only for Robert to know, of course, but isn’t it curious that he uses the exact same phrase twice - once in HS (decidedly a Jimbert song), and once three years earlier in “A Stolen Kiss” (the degree of Jimbert-ness tbd), where it takes center stage? Lots of emphasis for a standard meaningless metaphor, isn’t it? Makes you think that perhaps Robert is referring to something that actually happened in real life. Exciting stuff.)</p><p> </p><p>Now. Back to Heaven sent. Where were we?..</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> His empire falls, his spell will break </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Once cast aside, his song awakes </em>
</p><p>
  <em> … </em>
</p><p>
  <em> He rides the waves of freedom’s golden flood </em>
</p><p>(These lyrics, and the last two lines in particular, I read as a sort of prophecy - it sounds like a fact that is already true but really it is maybe more like the singer hoping for what’s to come, actively wishing it into existence. These two first lines are a jumble of tenses to begin with. Present - future - past - present - this coalescence of tenses gives me a vibe that is almost onoeric, or timeless in the sense of time having lost its meaning. Temporality is distorted, but that’s okay: time is only important for mortals, and this song is about angels and “everlasting love”.</p><p>Now then, what’s with the “empire” that “falls” and the “spell” that “will break”? As it turns out, this whole bit is one of the trickiest in the song - really hard to interpret with any degree of certainty. However, both Fishie and I believe it’s significant, so we had to give it our best shot anyway. Like I’ve said before, both “empire” and “spell” are clearly Jimmy’s attributes. But if it refers to the glory days of Zeppelin, then by 2017 the empire had long fallen and the spell broken, hadn’t they? Judging from the lyrics, apparently that’s not it.</p><p>Empires are about money and power. In a way, Jimmy is still riding the fame and praise he gathered with Zeppelin, and the wealth and glory is all there too. What if the “spell” is this mythical image of the band as gods that is still prevalent among the audience after all those decades? In the eyes of the world, there is no Jimmy Page, a mortal man of flesh and blood - only the legendary façade built a long time ago, that is not actually creatively active anymore, or particularly reflective of the current reality. In the song, Robert prophesies that “once [it is] cast aside, his song awakes” - possibly meaning that the real Jimmy, so to speak, will emerge if he stops rolling in his past glories and opens up to new music... or to something new, at any rate. That is, maybe Robert means to say, “When you put away all that stuff, there you are, and you sing”.</p><p>We may well be wrong but it’s fun to try and work these things out.)</p><p> </p><p>Heaven Sent is the last song of the whole album, and the order, naturally, is not random. By way of conclusion, let us take a look at how themes are introduced and develop from one song to the next. Llike I said before, the 6 songs make up one coherent <em> text </em>, And literature/poetry, just like music, is a temporal art: it develops linearly in time.</p><p>In The May Queen Robert introduces the main themes: 1) "I'm feeling hopeful and ready for a change for the better", 2) "my love for my old lover is still strong and I'm seeking to be reunited", 3) "the time is running out". The May Queen, I feel, deals more with Robert's inner state, his own self and the present moment.</p><p>DWYT is next, and it features <em> the exact same three themes </em>, this time shifting the focus outwards, to the addressee, to their shared past - it's a real plea now, a 'letter', as I've called it, because it helps me to think about it this way.</p><p>AWWW - <em> again, </em> these same three things reappear, the third one ("time running out") to a lesser extent this time - instead, we have a variation: 3.1) "I'll wait for you no matter what"; but we also see a new addition: 4) "I'm sorry for what happened before".</p><p>Carry Fire: 3.1) and 4) are further developed (it is, after all, a direct continuation of AWWW), and 2) is also heavily represented.</p><p>Keep It Hid: this one is very heavy on 3), and of course the whole song RP dedicates to nagging his "baby" so that she sees sense and finally comes back to him, to "take the wine from the loving cup" so to speak - that's a variation of 2). "At the end of the world where the sun comes up / There's a silver key and a golden cup" - very hopeful, that's 1). "I'm sorry", or rather a variation thereof, "my baby is mad at me" is also there, hinted at in verse 3.</p><p>Heaven Sent: this one <em> is </em> a bit different - because here instead of mere mortals we have heavenly beings. Instead of old lovers looking at their past happiness and fallings-out, we have eternity and "everlasting love". This song feels different - not quite like a normal part of the narrative - because Robert as the author put more distance between the singer and the person the song is about - that's done by writing mainly in third person instead of second ('he' instead of 'you') like every other song out of the six. There's one instance of 'you' in HS ("still hear your song but time won't wait") - incidentally, this is the place in the song where time becomes real again and we are back in the human world for a moment - and that's how we know that the singer is actually still RP himself, that the song is not impersonal - very much the opposite.</p><p>Where am I going with all this? I said HS feels different to the other songs in the chain - but then how can I still maintain they make up a single coherent text? Well, the order is significant here. HS is the last song on the album - it's an epilogue of sorts. We all know how epilogues can be and often are just a little different to the rest of the story - either in tone, in form, in setting and time, or in point of view, etc.</p><p>Still, if you look for the unifying themes I identified above, you will find them in HS too: 2) "He feeds the flame of everlasting love / Still hear your song / All the love for giving never really gone"; 3) "But time won't wait"; a variation of 4) "Spend the time forgiving / never really done". As for 1), it's maybe not so directly phrased but I think verse 2 is prophetic and quite hopeful - as I've said before, I think it's about RP's vision for the future rather than about the current reality. Also, the whole last part ("All that's worth the doing...") is looking towards a future together, pleading with Jimmy to give it another chance. </p><p>There we go then, the songs all fit together and echo and support each other. Almost as if by design - uncanny, isn't it?</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>If you have reached this paragraph, thank you for staying with me through this whole thing. I hope I don’t come across as completely delusional. And even if I do… I mean we only live once, and I really enjoy my Jimbert being real. Please let me know your thoughts, I’d love to see some opinions! &lt;3</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is waaaay away from finished, but let's just start the ball rolling, shall we? </p>
<p>But there's more. There will ALwAYs be mORE. When I think I've got it all more or less sussed out, I (or someone else) have a listen to another album, and DRAT, MORE JIMBERT. </p>
<p>You can contribute stuff too btw. Actually, I'd appreciate it. Do bring my attention to whatever I may have missed.</p>
<p>If you have ideas and observations, be most welcome to share. If you write us an essay, it will be added to this collection under your name, OR you can put it up and link us to it. Even if it's just a thought or an idea you'd like as a footnote or whatever, you will be credited for it, of course.</p>
<p>And feel free to take over the comment section to discuss wherever you like. I would like this to become a nerd's sandbox where we can all play, so grab a shovel and a bucket; let's dig deeper.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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